International migration and the rise of the ‘civil’ nation

Scholars largely agree that immigration policies in Western Europe have switched to a liberal, civic model. Labelled as ‘civic turn’, ‘civic integration’ or ‘liberal convergence’, this model is not identically applied across countries, since national institutions, traditions and identifications still matter. Even so, the main focus is on processes which allow or prevent migrants to be incorporated into nations usually taken for granted in their meanings. Moving from policies to discourses, this article aims to interrogate what kind of nation is behind these policies as a way to further scrutinise the ‘civic turn’. Exploring how the term ‘civility’ and its adjectivisations are discursively deployed in Italian parliamentary debates on immigration and integration issues, the article points to two opposite narratives of nation. While one mobilises civility in order to rewrite the nation in terms of a common, inclusive, civic ‘we’, the other uses civility to reaffirm the conflation between national identity and the identity of the ethno-cultural majority. These findings suggest the importance of exploring the ‘civic turn’ not only across countries, but also across political parties within the same country to capture the ways in which a liberal, civic convergence in political discourses might hide divergent national boundary mechanisms.     

In the Name of God and Nation: The Overlapping Influence of Separatism and Religion on Ethnic Conflict

Processes of migration, diaspora and exile offer diverse and complex environments for the renegotiation of social identities. Immigrants and refugees must not only adapt to the material circumstances of uprooting but must also confront, maintain or recreate a sense of self, often in contexts which are vastly different and fraught with constraints, in which they are removed from their familiar social networks and in which their previous identities may be of little meaning or relevance to the new society. In confronting an altered social status and radically different circumstances, individuals may be required to come to terms with a new or reconstructed sense of ethnic or national identity. This process is not only a personal one but involves affiliations with others who engage in similar interpretations and adaptive strategies and enmity toward those who do not' Field, 1994: 432 . Such a process can be seen as part of the phenomenon of transnationalism, the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement' Basch et al., 1994: 7 . One important aspect of transnationalism is the role that immigrants and refugees play in political activities in both their countries of origin and residence, and their political commitment often has important implications for their sense of self, particularly when those political activities are directed towards the creation of a new homeland for oppressed minorities. This paper examines the role played by diaspora intellectuals in promoting a nationalist discourse which calls for the creation of an independent state for the Oromo, who constitute one of the largest ethnic populations in Africa and the manner in which their participation in such discursive activities allow them to engage in a reconstruction of their own identities and in the shaping of national and personal senses of the self.     

To see ourselves as others see us: identity and attitudes towards immigration amongst civic nationalists

ABSTRACT

This article examines how different conceptions of national identity can be linked to attitudes towards cultural pluralism. The tensions between more culturally pluralistic societies and sustained support for nationalism represent an important political issue in modern western European politics. Such tensions are of particular relevance for stateless nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) for whom national/regional identity is a major political driver. This article empirically tests the relationship between different conceptions of national identity and attitudes towards cultural pluralism in two SNRPs—the Scottish National Party and the Frisian National Party. The article draws upon evidence from two unique full party membership studies and is supported with evidence from documentary analysis. A key finding is that the manner in which members conceptualise national identity has significant implications for their attitudes towards cultural pluralism, which has the potential of becoming a source of tension within SNRPs. A key implication of the article is that there is evidence that attitudes of general members and officially stated party positions and narratives diverge on issues relating to cultural pluralism and national identity. These tensions could potentially be harmful for the party's overall civic image.     

Diversities of National Identity in a Multicultural Society: The Australian Case

During the past half-century Australian immigration policy has moved from the assimilationist doctrine of Anglo-conformity, whereby non-British settlers were expected to adopt the Australian way-of-life, to a policy of multiculturalism that accepts and respects the cultures and traditions of newcomers, governed only by an overriding commitment to the basic institutions of Australian society. Newcomers are encouraged to take out Australian citizenship, which is available to immigrants after two years' residence, provided that they meet some other requirements, for example, the ability to speak and understand basic English. Notwithstanding changes in official policy, the population at large has a more diverse range of understandings of what it means to be 'truly Australian'. In this paper, I validate an earlier typology of such understandings and explore the social and attitudinal correlates of beliefs about Australian identity among four broad groupings of Australians: dogmatic nativists; literal nativists; civic nationalists; and moderate pluralists. Data are drawn from modules on Australian identity from the 1995 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the 1996 Australian Electoral Survey (AES). I explore the substance of these different understandings in terms of the beliefs and attitudes that Australians of various persuasions hold about a range of current social and political issues, such as levels of immigration, the effect immigrants have on the economy and society, views about the monarchy versus a Republic, the role of trade unions, and related issues.     

Beyond the Ballot: Immigrant Integration Through Civic Engagement and Advocacy

This conceptual article outlines the current literature on immigrant integration, immigrant civic engagement practices, opportunities to include other civic engagement activities into existing concepts of immigrant integration, and suggestions for future research and practice. The authors support a framework of civic and political integration of immigrants that goes beyond voting, and purposefully delineates categories that are commonly used to distinguish immigrants based on their eligibility for citizenship and participation in elections. Civic community organizing activities for all immigrants, regardless of citizenship status, can help build individual and community identity and empowerment as well as help mitigate stressors associated with immigrant feelings of social isolation. Implications for theory and practice on the role noncitizen immigrants play in the policy-making process and how they are received (or systematically left out) of this civic engagement process are also discussed.     

The importance of Australian national identity to a sense of belonging of Anglo-Celtic and Chinese cultural groups in regional Australia

This study explored the primacy of importance of Australian national identity as underpinning belongingness of Anglo-Celtic and Chinese cultural groups. A mixed-method approach comprised focus groups and interviews was used. Australian national identity did not hold primacy of importance to a sense of belonging in either group, however family identities were of primary importance to both, together with cultural identity of the Chinese. Anglo-Celtic's felt culturally disassociated, whereas Chinese sought majority acceptance through cultural promotion, and bicultural identification. Findings call for further research of Australian national identity of the majority and other minority cultural groups.     

Australian national identity: empirical research since 1998

The question of what Australian identity means has re-emerged, as globalisation and a concerted political effort to reconstruct an ‘Anglo’ identity have caused uncertainty about ‘who we are’. To explore how Australians conceptualise identity, this paper examines empirical research since Phillips’ [1998. Popular views about Australian identity: Research and analysis. Journal of Sociology, 34(3), 281–302. doi:10.1177/144078339803400305] seminal work synthesising research on Australian identity. Nearly two decades on, a civic/ethno-nationalist distinction and traditional socio-political correlates remain; but less dichotomous constructions are also being explored and more progressive values included. Key differences are found in the increased range of meanings of Australianness, as well as an apparent shift, for some, towards a cosmopolitan identity.     

Rhetorics of the State: The Public Negotiation of Political Character in Germany,Russia, and Quebec

National identity construction is a fundamentally rhetorical phenomenon maintained and transformed through public discourse. Through the analysis of dramatically rejected state speeches related to national identity and public responses to them, critics can compare competing articulations of national identity against the chronological historical record to identify various instances of strategic memory. By isolating dominant strategies of remembrance, the political character of emergent national identities can be outlined. In this essay, I explicate a critical rhetorical approach to controversial speech called limit work, providing examples of the public negotiation of national identity in 1988 West Germany, 1993 Russia, and 1995 Quebec that illustrate its utility.     

The ‘Habsburg Dilemma’ Today: Competing Discourses of National Identity in Contemporary Austria

This article analyses discourses of Austrian national identity. It discusses the reproduction (and contestation) of national identities on the levels of everyday language, political debate and policy. Three discursive formations of the nation—and their histories—are discussed: a nowadays marginal and de-legitimated discourse of pan-Germanic ethnicism; the hegemonic paradigm of ‘Austrian-ness’, which itself comprises a range of ideological positions and constitutes the over-arching framework to most (relevant) debates; and counter-hegemonic discourses including European- and ‘post-national’ identity formations. The article also discusses individuals’ ongoing negotiation of, and possible resistance to, discourses of national belonging, and concludes by relating its findings to the contemporary salience of national identities as a reaction to the (perceived) consequences of economic globalisation.     

Ethnic origin and identity in the Jewish population of Israel*

The paper addresses the multifaceted quality of ethnicity in the Jewish population of Israel by probing into the ethnic categories and their subjective meaning. The analyses utilise data collected during 2015–2016 on a representative sample of Israelis age 15 and older, as part of the seventh and eighth rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS). Hypotheses are developed concerning the relationship between demographically based ethnic origin and national identity, as well as the effect of ethnically mixed marriages on ethnic and national identities. The analyses reveal a strong preference among Jews in Israel to portray their ancestry in inclusive national categories – Israeli and Jewish – rather than more particularistic, ethno-cultural, categories (e.g. Mizrahim, Moroccan, Ashkenazim, Polish, etc). Yet, whether Israeli or Jewish receives primacy differs by migration generation, socioeconomic standing, religion, and political dispositions. While the findings clearly add to our understanding of Israeli society, they are also telling with regard to immigrant societies more generally. First, they reveal a multi-layered structure of ethnic identification. Second, they suggest that ethnic identities are quite resistant to change. Third, ethnically mixed marriages appear to erode ethnic identities and are likely to replace them with national identities.     

Prominence and exclusivity: Identity and opposition to immigration in a multinational context

Using a framework derived from Identity Theory, this work focuses on the extent to which attitudes towards immigration are structured by the prominence and exclusivity of national identity. Prominence refers to the value of an identity relative to others. Exclusivity is when the prominence of a single identity negates all other comparable identities. Prominence and exclusivity are relevant for understanding attitudes towards immigration in that they imply degrees of flexibility on the very dimension of identity that most distinguishes immigrants—nationality. Catalonia, an autonomous region of Northwestern Spain that is home to multiple autochthonous identities and a recent large influx of immigrants, allows the role of identity exclusivity and prominence to be directly assessed. Using a representative survey of attitudes towards immigration collected in 2010 (n?=?1389), results show that, contrary to expectations, exclusive and prominent identifiers (i.e. only Spanish or only Catalan) are not significantly more opposed to immigration. Future work should consider national identity to be a relevant contextual dimension not for its independent predictive power, but because of its intersection with other salient predictors such as education, employment and class.     

Aristophanes on Bawds in the Boardroom: Comedy as a Guideline to Gender Relations in Antiquity

By exploring the links between the notion of public secrets and popular imaginaries of sovereign power in Burundi, this article demonstrates the shortcomings of the pervasive Foucauldian perception of power as mere relations. Through conspiracy theories about the secret machinations of power, people in Burundi attempt to make sense of domination and sovereignty and to locate the evasive kernel of power. They try to pinpoint the sovereign, assuming that he is hiding behind the scenes, pulling the strings of ‘true power’. While conspiracy theories and rumours attempt to reveal the secret, they also reconfirm its existence and hence strengthen sovereign power which depends not only on the spectacle but also on the assumption that it has a hidden supplement. In this manner, secrecy—located at the summit of forces—becomes the irreducible element of political ontology.

The article also explores the relationship between secrecy and ethnicity. It argues that the very ambiguous relationship of ethnic identities in Burundi—allowing friendship and intermarriage on the one hand while leading to ethnocide on the other—is expressed through the lens of secrecy. The perception of hiding true identities leads to conspiracy theories that search for the other's hidden agendas. This in turn means that nobody dares expose his or her true identity for fear of what ‘the other’ might do.     

Identity,Othering and belonging: toward an understanding of difference and the experiences of African immigrants to Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to contribute to understanding of difference and knowledge on the analysis of the concepts of identity, Othering and belonging not only from a theoretical perspective, but more importantly by relating them empirically to the Australian context in a way that sheds a better light on the experiences of African immigrants to Australia. It draws on data from interviews conducted with 30 black Africans living in South East Queensland. Their racialized identities impacted on how they felt, were defined, related to and constructed, in Australia. Their accounts suggest that Othering practices can marginalize, exclude and affect migrants and refugees’ ideas and sense of belonging. The findings indicate the need for a more inclusive Australia, the accommodation of difference, the fostering of new identities, the rejection of negative representations and stereotypes of the Other, and the recognition that Othering is one of the important factors to understanding the marginalization, exclusion and challenges of ethnically and racially marked people in Australia.     

Racial contestation and the emergence of populist nationalism in the United States

Much of the discussion surrounding nationalism still revolves around the ethnic versus civic nation divide. For purposes of this paper it is more useful to view the United States from the tri-modal perspective offered by Anderson, in which the United States is a creole (or settler) nation. All of Anderson's types can be seen as variants of ethnic nationalism. Kaufmann argues that the US evolved from ethnic to civic nationalism by the 1960s. This argument overlooks the importance of phenotype-based racism in the evolution of creole, or white settler colonial nationalism. We want to argue that US nationalism evolved from ethnic, to white racial nationalism in the interwar years. Since the 1920s, the political establishment has opted for civic nationalism that is based upon ‘white assimilationism’. This civic nationalism has been challenged by multiculturalism since the 1960s. In the context of a democratic political culture, the content of American nationalism has become ‘populist’ in the sense that it has come under popular contestation from the assimilationist right and the multiculturalist left. This populist nationalism includes aspects of ethnic and civic nationalism. Racial formation theory will be used to show that national identity may remain under ‘relatively permanent political contestation’ with racial cleavage as a major fault line in that contest. The issues of immigration and the treatment of Muslims since 9/11 will be addressed in order to make the case.     

Immigration,national identity and political trust in European democracies

This article argues that discrepancies between individual-level conceptualisations of national identity and official government approaches to national identity, as reflected in policies towards migrants, contribute to reduced levels of political trust in Europe. Public opinion data matched with contextual data measuring immigrant incorporation policies are used to investigate this proposition. The findings indicate that individuals who take a more exclusive approach to national identity but live in political systems that are comparatively more welcoming of immigrant incorporation into the national political system tend to be the least trusting of their political systems, and this is closely followed by those individuals who adopt a more inclusive form of identity but live in countries that are relatively less welcoming in their treatment of immigrants. Where individual identity and immigrant incorporation are both inclusive, trust tends to be relatively high.     

西部民族地区互联网使用对居民国家认同感的积极影响——基于宁夏三县（区）民族村的调查

西部民族地区已实现互联网基础设施建设全面覆盖，但互联网使用影响国家认同感的具体机制尚未在已有研究中得到充分揭示。本文从铸牢中华民族共同体意识出发，考察互联网环境中信息接触、在线交往和媒介偏好对西部民族地区农村居民国家认同感的影响，从中识别出产生实证性效果的具体因素。研究发现，西部民族地区居民国家认同感高，且态度稳定一致；互联网已经成为形塑国家认同感的主要舆论场域：在人际层面，异质性在线交往对国家认同产生积极影响；在个体层面，网络信息环境通过个体媒介偏好对国家认同产生差异化的影响。研究强调了互联网是形塑西部民族地区居民国家认同的重要路径这一基本事实，揭示出异质性在线交往和网络新闻偏好对强化国家认同的重要意义。     

Searching for belonging and confronting exclusion: a person-centred approach to immigrant settlement experiences in Canada

ABSTRACT

Drawing on an analysis of three immigrant narratives, this paper employs a person-centred approach to immigrant integration in Canada. It examines how immigrants interpret the inclusions/exclusions that mark their integration experience and the consequences these experiences have on their social identities and sense of belonging. Analysis demonstrates that for immigrants a sense of belonging does not grow in a linear fashion; rather, it grows, stalls, dissipates and/or flourishes in relation to the ties and identifications that immigrants are enabled to forge. Broader structural and historical forces prefigure immigrant inclusion and exclusion in Canada in ways that reflect a hierarchy of migration and belonging. We argue that a recognition of Canada’s ‘hierarchies of belonging’ and the multidimensional nature of social inclusion/exclusion complicate integration metaphors that flatten the uneven social terrain of immigrant belonging.     

身份与利益——东南亚恐怖主义根源探析

恐怖主义是人类社会的灾难,长期对东南亚地区的和平与安全构成重大威胁。防控东南亚恐怖主义的蔓延并进行根治,是东南亚各国政府、域外利益攸关方(stakeholders)、国际组织共同关心的议题。身份-利益这一特质为区分东南亚恐怖主义类型提供了研究方法,也为探寻其不同的根源提供了研究途径。东南亚恐怖主义滋生于身份认同的异质化及自身对特殊政治利益的追求,以身份认同为标准和边界,东南亚恐怖主义可以分为左右翼革命型、民族主义-分裂主义型和宗教-政治型三种类型。东南亚恐怖主义身份认同需要靠利益支持,利益是东南亚恐怖主义身份认同的基础,没有利益支持的身份认同是不稳固的,当身份无法继续提供凝聚力时,东南亚恐怖组织将会走向解体或分裂,其中分裂出的恐怖组织分支会为寻求支持而建构新的身份认同。虽然东南亚恐怖组织存在多元身份认同,但只有其中一种身份在构建恐怖主义时起着决定性的作用。在治理恐怖主义上各国需要采取针对性强的政策,同时需要预防其他身份构建恐怖主义的可能。