A comparative assessment of public opinion toward immigrants and immigration policies

"This article is part of a larger study of public attitudes toward immigration in seven countries that historically and currently have had different policies and practices vis-a-vis immigration. The countries involved are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the United States. The time frame for which most of the public opinion data will be reported is from 1970 through 1995. The data have been collected from national surveys that were conducted in each of the countries."     

Immigrant women and housing issues: a symbolic magnifying glass for social and cultural changes in Italian civil movements*

In recent decades, social movements have expanded their range of action, adopting a more global perspective. Although many studies have been made of varied national and transnational movements, it still remains a little-studied field that involves the participation of immigrants, especially women, in social movements in Italy. These movements involve various problem areas. The thematic focus of our research is the housing, at the national level, and our chosen case study regards the situation as it presents itself in Rome. At a time when there seems to be less public interest in economic, social and cultural rights in favor of a broader interest in individual rights, studying the role of immigrant women in the participation of foreign communities in social movements for housing rights can encourage and support a renewed attention to this area, also because of the changing social composition of the resident population, and the emergence of old and new forms of poverty, of which the incoming immigration flows are one of the main causes. As we can see, the figure of the immigrant transforms the housing problem into a problem of co-habitation, or even better, of co-existence.     

Immigration to the Federal Republic of Germany as a demographic and social problem

"Addressing the question of immigration to Western Europe and especially to Germany from east and southeast Europe and from developing countries of the South, this article considers whether such immigration can compensate for reductions in population in developed countries. It is argued that the demographic deficits of an aging population can only be corrected to a limited extent through immigration. Any solution, in order to be effective, must include a simultaneous increase in the birthrates of Germany and other European Community countries. With particular regard to future social development in Germany and the EC, it would be advisable for governments to effect measures that will provide both for controlled admissions of immigrants from outside the EC and an increase in local reproductive capabilities."     

Managing the National Status Group: Immigration Policy in Germany

This article challenges the established convention in immigration policy scholarship of treating economic utility and identity maintenance as logically distinct concerns. Drawing on work by Weber, Wallerstein and Bourdieu, we argue that concerns about economic utility and identity maintenance interact in the immigration policies of Western liberal democratic states, leading to policies designed to build and maintain middle‐class national status groups. Using the example of contemporary immigration policy in Germany, we illustrate how this impulse to build the middle‐class status group affects immigrant inclusion/exclusion in nuanced ways at both the group and individual levels, along class/status, ethnic and gender lines. We conclude by considering the policy implications of growing and shaping populations according to middle‐class ideals, particularly for the statistical monitoring of immigrant populations for integration benchmarking purposes.     

The evolution of French immigration policy after May 1981

Changes and continuities in French immigration policies, following the assumption of power by the socialist government in 1981, are described. Attention is focused on the political implications of immigration and on the role of immigrants in French politics. Efforts to restrict immigration to France were initiated in 1931, but clandestine immigration, especially from Portugal, remained largely unchecked for 4 decades. In the early 1970s, stricter enforcement measures were adopted, but these measures met with considerable international and national opposition. In 1977, the government altered its approach to immigration by offering financial aid to help illegal migrants return to their countries of origin. These efforts met with little success, and in 1980 the government initiated measures to promote the integration of immigrants into French society. The socialistic government basically adhered to the immigration policies of the preceding government. The current government seeks: 1) to stop further illegal immigration through the intensification of border controls, 2) to grant amnesty to illegal aliens who currently reside in the country and who meet certain employment requirements, 3) to penalize employers who hire illegal aliens or who contract to bring illegal aliens into the country, and 4) to improve living conditions for legal immigrants. The politicalization of immigration has increased in recent years. Current issues center on the human and political rights of migrants and on arbitary administrative efforts to control immigration. It was expected that migrants would acquire political rights after the 1981 election; however, this expectation was not realized, and the political status of immigrants remains an unsettled issue. Consequently migrants have become pawns in the political struggle between different groups in the population both at the national and the local level. Immigration threatens to become an explosive issue. At the same time, migrants themselves are playing an increasingly prominent role in political activities, such as rent strikes and protest movements.     

Migration and Human Rights on the Mexico-Guatemala Border

This paper identifies the protections in place for irregular migrants on the Mexico‐Guatemala border and analyzes Mexican government immigration enforcement policies and levels of compliance with international standards and national law. The history of the Mexico‐Guatemala border region and different types of migration flows into and through the area are also explored, as well as the linkages between migration, trade, security, and US immigration policy. It is argued that the Mexican government has partially complied with international conventions and national laws to protect the human rights of transmigrants in the Guatemalan border region, but that compliance is not complete and that an international response is required to ensure that human rights standards are upheld.     

Building Walls, Bounding Nations: Migration and Exclusion in Canada and Germany, 1870–1939

Abstract Transformations in global capitalism increased rates of international migration at the turn of the twentieth century, a period also marked by the widespread popularity of scientific racism, integral nationalism, and vaunted notions of state sovereignty. This paper considers how the intersection of these factors influenced migration and citizenship policymaking in Canada and Germany. In both cases, migration was harnessed to further economic objectives while groups deemed a threat to national integration because of their putative racial or ethno-national characteristics were excluded. The resultant policies would come to define Canada and Germany's approaches to the migration-membership dilemma for the much of the twentieth century.     

Does Europe need immigrants? Population and work force projections

European countries defined as all Northern and Western Europe including the former East Germany had a population of 498.4 million in 1990. In 1990 Western Europe had 374.4 million people. The European Community (EC) makes u 92% of the total population. Projections forecast a peak of the EC population (excluding the former East Germany) in 2005 at 334.2 million compared with 327 million in 1989, then declining to 332.5 million in 2010, 329.0 million min 2015 and 324.5 million in 2020. In Europe outside the East, the 20-24 year old work force entrance age group will drop from 29,860,000 in 1990 to 26,400,000 in 1005 and 23,480,000 in 2000: decreasing by 6,380,000 or 21.3%. Fertility rose by 22% in Sweden between 1985 and 1990, the rise of negligible in France and Belgium, but 2% in the UK and Switzerland, 4% in the Netherlands, 13% in Norway, 16% in Denmark, and even 6% in Germany and Luxembourg. The Ec labor force was 145 million in 1990 (excluding East Germany); it is projected to peak at 146.9 million in 2000, decline slowly until 2010 and decline faster up to 2025 with the steepest decline occurring in Germany and Italy. Unemployment rates would change from the 1990 estimate of 15.7 million to 15.5 million in 1995. Net migration into the 12 EC countries was on average -4,800 from 1965 to 1969; 357,000 from 1970 to 1974; 164,400 from 1980 to 1984; and 533,000/year from 1985 to 1989 as a result of the rise of asylum applicants and migration of ethnic Germans into Germany. Increased immigration is not needed to satisfy work force shortages for the next 10-20 years in Western Europe or in the EC. Other issues addressed are the economic activity forecast, the hidden labor supply, skill shortages, Eastern Europe, and teenage shortage. High-level manpower movements, immigration of asylum seekers, and illegal immigration will continue, but in the long run the conditions of employment and welfare support have to be improved for the women of Europe.     

Migration Policies and Political Cultures in Europe: A Changing Trend

This paper discusses the relationships between the migratory policies of the EU countries with more experience of immigration and their national political cultures. It focuses on France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It then looks at Italy, a relatively new country of immigration, which, with 3,000,000 legal immigrants, has become the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean basin. In its final part it highlights the incipient process of ‘communitarisation’ of the immigration policies of EU countries in the last decade. This process, which has already entailed a significant convergence of their migratory policies, is expected to continue after the recent enlargement of the European Union.     

“We will Manage It” – Did Chancellor Merkel's Dictum Increase or Even Cause the Refugee Movement in 2015?

In public and scientific debates about the dynamics of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, there are highly controversial positions concerning the statement on August 2015 by Chancellor Merkel: “We will manage it” Did this dictum actually increase or even unleash the refugee migration towards Europe in 2015? Was Germany's governmental policy against the legal European and national frame? Based on an analysis of legal documents and public statements, the article first reconstructs the development of refugee immigration into the EU, especially to Germany, in 2015 and reviews whether the German government violated law and opened one-sided borders. Based on survey data of 4,500 refugees in 2016, it then analyses whether the Merkel dictum significantly changed the volume and the reasons why refugees decided to flee to Germany. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.     

The ethnosurvey in theory and practice

This article describes a research approach designed to overcome the limitations of federal immigration statistics and to illuminate the social processes underlying aggregate patterns of migration. The principal weaknesses of existing data sources are that they underenumerate and imperfectly measure undocumented migration; they do not reflect the widespread circularity of modern international movements; they omit variables central to the immigration process; and their cross-sectional collection and tabulation precludes the analysis of immigration as a dynamic process. The ethnosurvey is a research design that ameliorates these problems through 5 specific design features: multimethod data collection, representative multisite sampling, multilevel data compilation, life history collection, and parallel sampling. The ethnosurvey design is illustrated by its recent application to study Mexican migration to the US, and empirical evidence is presented to show how it corrects the limitations of federal data on immigration. In spite of its advantages, the ethnosurvey does have several drawbacks. It is costly and requires a substantial investment of professional time. Rather than emphasizing breadth of information, as does a representative sample survey, the ethnosurvey attempts to gather detailed information through intensive analysis of particular communities. The ethnosurvey, because of its costs and professional demands, is hard to implement within a representative sampling framework. For these reasons, the ethnosurvey is best seen as a supplement to other sources of immigration data, providing specialized information on the social processes that underlie the aggregate patterns revealed in national statistics. However, promising results obtained in applying the ethnosurvey to study immigration suggest that it may profitably be applied to investigate other longitudinal social processes as well, such as status attainment, occupational mobility, and residential mobility.     

Immigration,segregation and social cohesion: is the ‘German model’ fraying at the edges?

In this article, we analyse immigrant integration against the background of German society’s social cohesion. First, we examine the integration process and policies with regard to the integration of first-generation labour migrants into the German ‘national society’ since the 1960s. Even though these ‘guest workers’ were confronted to ethnic and political exclusion owing to the so-called German integration model, they experienced socio-economic integration and, at the local level, some form of political participation. Secondly, we analyse the policies and the integration process of immigrant youth, specifically those of Turkish descent, into contemporary German society, the social cohesion of which is impeded by social exclusion and urban segregation. Our hypothesis is that – in spite of a long-standing refusal to recognise itself as an immigration country – Germany has to some extent incorporated its migrants and achieved an integration consensus, while paradoxically, national integration models in several other Western European countries are currently going through a deep crisis.     

Recent developments in the employment and retirement of older workers in Germany

Against a background of an aging population, rising social security costs, and foreseeable labor and skill shortages, there have been public policy changes affecting older workers in Germany. Labor-market related initiatives aim at an increase of labor force participation among this group. Enterprise-related, active age-management strategies aim at improving occupational conditions of aging workers. In this context, prolonging the working life must be seen as one option of "active aging." Another view of the current retirement discussion is the question of how the unused potential of Germany's younger, early-retired seniors can be exploited. Active aging has become a social duty nowadays, with the intention that older persons contribute to society to avoid generational conflicts. In the future, active aging will preserve the competitiveness of enterprises and of the entire economy, despite an aging labor force. But gerontological research points out that different options to carry out individual life plans of active aging are also required. This article reviews the changes in public policies towards older workers and includes the findings of a project that illustrates good practice to combat age barriers in the labor world.     

Immigrants,Immigration, and Sociology: Reflecting on the State of the Discipline*

The growth of the field of immigration in multiple directions and across disciplines and areas presents an opportune juncture to pause and reflect on the central role sociology has played in the study of immigrants and immigration, as well as to assess the contributions that immigration research has made to sociology. This essay discusses three subfields in sociology in which the sociological study of immigrants has contributed to bring new light to long‐standing questions: family, religion, and ethnic and racial studies. At the same time, it brings up areas – culture and arts, social movements and civic engagement, and citizenship, belonging and the state – in which immigration scholars in sociology could establish a more vibrant intellectual dialog with those subfields. Far from exhausting the discussion, these comments are intended to offer potential avenues for further research and discussion.     

Postnational acts of citizenship: how an anti-border politics is shaping feminist spaces of service provision in Toronto,Canada

Postnationalism has seen a modest resurgence in recent years as both a theory of citizenship and as a set of claims frequently articulated by anti-border movements. Yet the implications of postnationalism for feminist politics remain relatively under-theorized. Using interviews with feminist advocates in Toronto, Canada, this research examines how postnational challenges to state power are being mobilized in spaces of service provision addressing gender-based violence. I show how, for some advocates, a postnational politics deeply informed their critiques of state borders and restrictive immigration controls as fundamental sources of gendered and racialized violence. However, postnational approaches were also limited in offering few concrete alternatives to state protection from domestic or interpersonal violence, particularly for women with precarious immigration status. Significantly, it was through advocates’ everyday practices of service provision that they blueprinted an alternative feminist ethics of solidarity. I argue that these practices constitute postnational acts of citizenship, in so far as they attempt – albeit imperfectly – to de-border institutional spaces from within.     

Double emigration: geographical and cultural? The participation of Italian women in the German labour market

Already at the beginning of the fifties on the initiative of Italy, negotiations began between the Italian and German governments for the recruitment of migrant-workers, which ended in 1955 with a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Through this recruitment policy and because of the labour-market (Industry and Building) the Italian migration was composed prevalently of men. Female immigration happened in the setting of family reunification and less as an independent movement project. After years of stagnation of italian emigration in the eighties it may also be noted that, since the early nineties, there has been a revival of immigration to Germany. This and modernisation processes in Italy changed the gender composition of the Italian immigration flow to Germany: the distance between male and female immigration is decreasing. A peculiarity of the Italians in Germany is the low occupational participation of women in comparison with other women from EU countries. However, we could observe regional differences, which depend on the migration typologies and the dominating economic structure in the areas. The paper will analyse this different aspects (immigration-processes, migrant-typologies and labour-market participation) by female Italian migrants.     

ISKCON AND IMMIGRANTS: The Rise, Decline, and Rise Again of a New Religious Movement

This article examines the impact of Indian immigration on the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as "Hare Krishnas." After its emergence and initial growth as a new religious movement in the 1960s, ISKCON entered a period of decline and withdrawal in the 1980s because of second-generation problems and a series of financial and sexual scandals. A case study of the Chicago ISKCON temple shows that, since then, Indian immigration has provided ISKCON with new resources and a new target population for conversion. This has led to the reemergence of ISKCON as a religious movement, but one that differs in both its membership and its actions from the "seeker" movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The resurgence of ISKCON's movement activities is a product of congregational-level transnational interactions. The emergence of new religious movements, thus, must be seen in the context of broader historical dynamics as well as local microcosmic interactions. To the extent that these interactions are transnational in character, we should expect new religious movements to have an impact on the global "religious economy" with more rapid diffusion of religious innovations.     

The Jewish Emigration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany

Since the end of the 1980s a massive emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) can be observed. Israel and the United States were the most important receiving countries, followed by Germany, a comparatively new immigration destination for Jews from the successor states of the USSR. One of the reasons the German Government allowed the admission of Jews from post-Soviet states was the Jewish community's claim that this immigration might rejuvenate the German Jewish population in the longer run. Using an index of demographic aging (Billeter's J), the following article examines if this has actually happened. Findings suggest that immigration actually initiated a process of rejuvenation in the Jewish population in Germany. However, it was reversed during the end of the 1990s because of an unaffected low fertility.     

Transnational political practices and the receiving state: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands

This article examines how the social and political contexts in receiving countries affect the transnational political practices of migrants and refugees, such as their mobilization around political events in their homeland. The case study explores the political participation of Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands in its full complexity, that is in both the immigration country and in homeland politics. The findings suggest that transnational political practices should not be reduced to a function of the political opportunity structures of particular receiving countries for two main reasons: (a) more inclusive political structures, which provide for more participation and co‐operation on immigrant political issues, may at the same time, and for that very reason, serve to exclude dialogue on homeland politics; (b) homeland political movements may draw on a different range of resources than their immigrant political counterparts, including those outside the local political institutional context.     

Macroeconomic determinants of migration: the case of Germany, 1964-1988

Macroeconomic determinants of immigration are analysed with pooled cross-country and time series data on net immigration to Germany from European countries during 1964-1988.
Results demonstrate clearly that both high and low frequency determinants have been important. Long run trends are determined by the degree and speed of per capita income convergence between the sending and receiving countries, while year-to-year changes in net immigration flows are dominated by cyclical economic conditions.