Why do newcomers vote for a newcomer? Support for an immigrant party

This article studies the voters of DENK, the first immigrant party to gain seats in a national parliament. It builds further on the existing literature on how immigrants and people from immigrant descent vote in Western European countries. From the literature we derive seven expectations about the kind of voters that are likely to vote for an immigrant party in terms of their political cynicism, attitudes towards economic, globalisation and moral issues. We find that DENK voters are younger Muslims, who have conservative views on moral matters, cynical attitudes towards politics, right-wing views on economic matters and progressive views on issues that pertain to the globalisation dimension, such as immigration, integration and Islam and in particular discrimination. This article uses VAA data to construct a matched sample that in terms of key variables is representative for voters with and without a migration background.     

But do they speak it? The intergenerational transmission of home-country language in migrant families in France

To what extent can immigrant parents transmit their home-country language to their children? Drawing on a recent national sample of children of immigrants in France, this paper examines the effects of parental language socialisation and exposure to the parental home country on language ability and language practices of their adult children. The data show that parental efforts at transmitting the language are necessary, but ultimately insufficient especially when it comes to language practices. Almost none of those who grew up without or with only minimal exposure to the parental home-country language use it. But even among those who had extensive exposure only a minority end up using it in their daily lives. The only domain where the second-generation uses the parental home-country language to a non-trivial degree is in the family context. In addition parental resources can have contradictory effects. While successful transmission of home-country language in the immigrant context requires significant resources, those parents who have these resources are less likely to try to pass on their language.     

Contact and conflict between adult children and their parents in immigrant families: is integration problematic for family relationships?

Previous studies have shown that family ties are relatively strong in most non-western immigrant groups in Europe. This paper focuses on differences within the immigrant population and examines how cultural and social aspects of integration affect the relationships that adult children have with their parents. The study is based on survey data with a systematic oversample of persons aged 15–45 with Moroccan and Turkish origins in the Netherlands. The focus is on the amount of contact and conflict that children have with their parents. Findings show that persons of Moroccan and Turkish origins have more frequent contact, but also somewhat more conflict with their parents compared to people without any migration background. Ordinal logit models show that ties to parents are weaker when immigrant children are more liberal in their values and behaviours and when they have more frequent contact with natives. Educational attainment tends to increase conflict between parents and adult children. It is concluded that cultural and social integration may hurt family relationships, pointing to another but less often recognised obstacle for immigrant integration in the west.     

Institutionalising a cross-sectional policy area? Ministerial competences for migrant integration in EU member states

Migrant integration is a cross-sectional policy issue and its governance involves a network of actors operating on different regional and government levels. Its emergence as a distinct policy area in many European democracies has reinvigorated the role of state actors, particularly at the national level. National governments face a growing need to coordinate formerly disparate domestic integration measures, yet they are also encouraged by increasing activities and resources that have evolved at the EU level. From an institutional perspective, this spread of both norms and resources is likely to result in the emergence of new governmental actors assigned with these tasks. Yet, little scholarly attention has so far been dedicated to the comparison of ministerial competences for migrant integration across Europe and their relation to integration policies. The paper addresses this gap in a comparative study, presenting data on the ministerial competences in 27 EU member states and Switzerland between 2010 and 2014 and linking them to data on migrant integration policies using the MIPEX dataset. The findings show no general European trend towards top-level institutionalisation and instead reveal substantial differences between Western and Eastern European democracies associated with the respective patterns of integration policies.     

East-European immigrants responding to the recession in Britain: is there a trade-off between unemployment and over-qualification?

Most studies demonstrating the vulnerability of labour migrants following the recession have focused on unemployment. This article examines how the labour market performance of East-European workers in the U.K. has been affected by the recession by focussing on four possible employment outcomes: unemployment, self-employment, over-qualification and part-time jobs. By showing the relatively low rates of unemployment amongst East-European migrants, which have become even lower following the recession, it argues that the vulnerability of immigrants in periods of economic downturn cannot always be solely measured in higher rates of immigrant unemployment. Labour migrants may be prompted to take jobs (any jobs) below their skills and qualifications, thus suggesting a ‘trade-off’ between unemployment and over-qualification.     

Strangers within? Russian-speakers’ migration from Latvia to London: a study in power geometry and intersectionality

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to debates on ethnic identification and migration through a focus on a specific group – Russian-speakers from the Baltic state of Latvia who have migrated to the UK. Twenty-six interviews with members of this group were gathered in London and the wider metropolitan area during 2012 and 2014. Russian-speakers represent uniquely combined configurations of ‘the other within’: in most cases, they are EU citizens with full rights; yet, some still hold non-citizens’ passports of Latvia. While in Latvian politics Russian-speakers are framed as ‘others’ whose identities are shaped by the influence of Russia, interview findings confirm that they do not display belonging to contemporary Russia. However, London is the ‘third space’ – a multicultural European metropolis – which provides new opportunities for negotiating ethnic identification. Against the background of triple ‘alienation’ (from Latvia, from Russia and from the UK), we analyse how ethnicity is narrated intersectionally with other categories such as age and class. The findings show that Russian-speaking migrants from Latvia mobilise their Europeanness and Russianness beyond alienating notions of (ethno)national identity. The paper also demonstrates that being open to ethnicity as a category of practice helps us towards a progressive conceptualisation of often overlooked dimensions of integration of intra-EU linguistic ‘others’.     

One narrative or several? Politics,cultural elites,and citizens in constructing a ‘New Narrative for Europe’

ABSTRACT

European Union (EU) institutions have cultivated narratives of European integration for a long time. For its 2013–2014 ‘A New Narrative for Europe’ project, however, the European Commission for the first time explicitly used the ‘narrative’ label. Drawing on non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and qualitative discourse analysis, this article contrasts the drafting process and the resulting declaration’s narrative structure and content with its discussion by citizens in a web-based consultation. The analysis shows that participating citizens forcefully demanded a bottom-up debate and advocated pluralistic perspectives. In these circumstances, elite-driven attempts at strengthening European identity and EU legitimacy are likely to be ineffective.