Group cues and public opposition to immigration: evidence from a survey experiment in South Korea

One view in the study of attitudes towards immigration is that public reactions depend on who the immigrants are. Using a survey experiment, we confirm that group cues matter: South Koreans are more likely to support liberal immigration policies, when immigrants are framed as North Korean defectors (coethnic group). When other groups cues—Korean Chinese (semi-coethnic group) or guest-workers from Indonesia (non-coethnic group)—are given, the level of support becomes significantly lower. Apparently clear evidence on the existence of favouritism towards coethnic group notwithstanding, the relationship between in-group favouritism and immigration threat is not simple, as demonstrated by the finding that individuals exposed to Korean Chinese cues are more likely to feel culturally and socially threatened than those exposed to Indonesian cues. Also, South Koreans experience higher levels of economic threat from North Korean defectors than from Korean Chinese and Indonesians. Additional analysis reveals that ethnic group cues affect public attitudes towards immigration policies not necessarily by heightening perceived threat towards immigrants, but by facilitating individuals’ emotional reactions to them.     

National identity and attitudes towards immigration in Australia*

Creating and sustaining a shared sense of national identity is important in all societies, but it is especially crucial in societies with large immigrant populations. This paper uses a national public opinion survey collected in Australia to examine how Australians see their identity, and in turn to examine the consequences of these identities for views of immigrants and for party political support. The results confirm international research which shows the predominance of an ethno-national identity based on inherited characteristics, and a civic identity based on achieved characteristics. Both identities have consequences for the Australian public’s views of immigrants – an ethno-national identity leading to negative views of immigrants and a civic identity leading to positive views. In turn, identities and views of immigrants significantly shape support for the major political parties, with parties of the left being more supportive of immigrants and parties of the right less so. From a public policy perspective, the results suggest that successive Australian governments have made only partial progress in generating a strong sense of civic identity within the Australian population.     

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.     

Rhetorical Theory and the Critique of National Identity Construction

A striking feature of scholarship on national identity is the relative absence of rhetorical theory, or theory related to the persuasive dimensions of discourse, especially given the fact that rhetorical theorists have been concerned with the manufacturing of public opinion and collective identity for over two millennia. To address this absence, this article discusses how rhetorical theories dealing with narrative theory, the social construction of publics, rhetorical constraints, ideology critique, public memory, political history and post-national identity help both to illuminate and critique emergent patterns of national identification.     

Discursive Tactics and Political Identity: Shaping Hungarian Greek Catholic Identity at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

After a brief historical and theoretical introduction to the issues of Greek Catholicism in Hungary, the author presents their identity-creation process by way of analysing the Memorial Album published in honour of a pilgrimage to Rome in 1900. Studying the visual and discursive symbolism of the decorative album, the author considers it to be a symbolic representation of a community and an important step in the gradual creation of a Hungarian Greek Catholic identity. Finally, the author points out that the 100 year-old political process and its symbolic manifestation gained new importance as the formerly propagated uniform socialist identity disappeared in the wake of the political changes of 1989–1990.     

Mad Max: The Car and Australian Governance

This article argues that the car is an intimate aspect of the governance of Australia. The term 'governance' is defined as the techniques used to know, order and manage individuals. The film Mad Max II: The Road Warrior is used as a prism to separate out the roles that the car performs in governance. Three roles are identified: the car as identity, the car as myth and the car as power. Applying this framework to Australia reveals the car's complex involvement in Australian governance, from the knowing and ordering of others, to collective myths of possession and future prosperity, to the knowing of place from space, to the removal of indigenous children. The significance of the car means Australia can be characterised as the petrochemical, chrome-plated cyborg republic of Oz.     

The uses and abuses of history: understanding contemporary U.S. immigration*

This article focuses on history, specifically on how history affects our understanding of contemporary immigration. The spotlight is on the United States and the two massive immigrations of the last one hundred and forty years as well as on the integration of immigrants and their children. History is what the present chooses to remember about the past, and to that extent it inevitably distorts. This distortion is what is meant when I use the phrase abuses of history. Myths about the past, selective retellings, cherry-picked examples – they all shape how the story of immigration in the United States is perceived today. History, however, can be an extremely effective and illuminating tool. In examining the uses of history, the article pays special attention to the way that earlier immigrants and their children had an impact on cultural, social, and political institutions and patterns, which, in turn, helped shape the context for present-day arrivals. History, in fact, can deepen and expand our understanding of the contemporary immigrant and second generation; it can also provide some useful hints about the future.     

'The Justice of Queen Victoria': Boer Oppression,and the Emergence of a National Identity in Lesotho

The growth of a national identity in Lesotho after 1910 was a direct response to the threat of incorporation into the Union of South Africa. The Basotho feared being governed by what they considered to be an unjust and hostile South Africa. The Basotho appealed to the justice of the British government - for them to continue to honour the protection that they had extended to the nineteenth-century Basotho chief, Moshoeshoe. The protection which Moshoeshoe had secured entrenched his position as the centrepiece of the Basotho's emergent national identity in the twentieth century.     

中亚东干人文化变迁与民族认同

今天生活在中亚吉尔吉斯斯坦、哈萨克斯坦、乌兹别克斯坦的东干人大约有13万,他们原本是清朝末年我国西北回民起义失败后,在白彦虎等几位首领带领下逃亡中亚的陕甘回民后裔。由于他们迁徙到一个完全陌生的异域环境,并与内地回族在完全隔离的状态下生活了130多年,其语言、文化等受到相邻民族文化影响,发生了许多变化,但他们仍有较强的回...     

Identity construction through English language learning in intra-national migration: a study on Uyghur students in China

ABSTRACT

This study explores how a group of Uyghur minority students construct their identities in and through English language learning experiences as they move from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to study in a prestigious East coastal university in China. The research findings show that the processes of English language learning enable the ethnic minority students to develop multiple yet powerful identities, that is, a situated elite identity constructed as opposed to other Uyghur members and a positive heritage identity negotiated within the academic community, and allow them to imagine multilingual and multicultural memberships for themselves. The favourable identities thus forged are found to facilitate their adaptation to the host community. However, these minority elites are confronted with a series of problems in learning English compared to their Han counterparts, which hinder their socialisation into the society and upward social mobility. Finally, implications for policy-makers, the host institution, and ethnic students are discussed.     

The other Chinese: identity work and self-orientalization of Chinese host country nationals in multinational corporations

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on an in-depth case study of narrative identity work to explore heuristically the role of host country nationals in the reproduction of orientalist discourses in multinational corporations (MNCs). Based on this analysis, it presents an identity strategy termed the other Chinese. The other Chinese claims to be in-between the West, that is constructed as superior modern and rational, and China, that is constructed as backwards and chaotic. This in-betweenness allows the other Chinese to take the role of a mediator between locals and expatriates, and at the same time claim superiority towards normal Chinese. Thus, this identity construction is a creative act of hybridization and localization, but it is not subversive to existing power structures in the MNCs. However, as we show, the construction of the other Chinese is not inextricably bound to the field of the MNCs, but is based on a hybrid and creative entanglement of various sources such as class positions and public discourse in China, in which the MNCs only occupy an insignificant role. It is, therefore, to be understood as an aspect of identity construction in China relevant for MNC identity, rather than an aspect of the transnational field of the MNCs.     

Discourses of Identity at the Spanish/Portuguese Border: Self-Identification Strategies of Centre and Periphery

This article examines the self-identification strategies that officials of two border towns use to characterise their respective localities. These strategies are considered relative to four theoretical paradigms used to analyse identity: centre-periphery, regionalist, essentialist and non-essentialist. Clear differences are revealed between the two towns, despite their similar geographical location at the periphery, general demographic features and shared history. In one case, the evidence suggests that the identity is centred locally and affirmed through daily behaviour or 'practices', while in the other, that the identity focus is regional and essentialist in nature.     

霸权、话语、认同与伊斯兰——评《西方霸权语境中的阿拉伯-伊斯兰问题研究》

上海外国语大学中东研究所马丽蓉教授的新著《西方霸权语境中的阿拉伯—伊斯兰问题研究》,沿着从霸权到话语霸权再到认同的逻辑思路,辅以对西方"东方主义"心理状态的分析,对西方霸权语境之下的阿拉伯—伊斯兰问题进行了深刻的论述。对于以中东为核心的阿拉伯—伊斯兰世界的争夺和控制是西方霸权的重要体现,霸权必然发展为对话语权的争夺以获得话语霸权,从而形成以妖魔化伊斯兰为特征的"遮蔽的伊斯兰"。霸权与话语霸权的争夺是深层的认同政治的表现,如何在文明对话和文化自觉的基础上进行认同重构,则是当前包括阿拉伯—伊斯兰文明在内的各大文明体系面临的重大挑战。     

Myth and Reality: Armenian Identity in the Early Middle Ages

A Christian isolationism, adherence to doctrine the Roman/Byzantine Empire deemed heretical, has popularly been assumed to have been integral to medieval Armenian identity. However, Armenians’ isolation was only partial: pilgrimage to the Holy Land joined them to the wider Christian world; missionary work was limited rather by politics and internal problems; orthodoxy and desire for church union were strong in Armenian history. ‘National’ unity was not an ideal, but distinctiveness was asserted by propagating, in literature and sculpture, an Old Testament, Hebraic descent for rival aristocratic families, and an equivalence between their leaders and Old Testament figures.     

Between Neo-liberalism and Neo-indigenismo: Reconstructing National Identity in Mexico

Heightened integration with the US coupled with the rise of an indigenous movement have challenged and strained long-held images regarding the US and the indigenous within Mexico. As a result, Mexico finds itself facing the difficult task of re-evaluating and reconstructing its national identity. This paper explores the traditional images of the US and the Indian shaping national identity in Mexico and the challenges posed today by neo-liberalism and neo-indigenismo. It sets out a range of current issues, explores the linkages and contradictions, and examines the state of national reform. Fundamentally, the paper strives to raise important theoretical questions and hence set the stage for further research into these issues.     

The public view of immigrant integration: multidimensional and consensual. Evidence from survey experiments in the UK and the Netherlands

Despite the growing interest in immigrant integration in a wide range of scholarly literature, there is less interest in how integration might be understood by the public. Using a survey-embedded conjoint experiment in the Netherlands and the UK, we ask the public what they think constitutes successful immigrant integration. We show that the public has a multidimensional view of integration, which goes beyond a simple preference for cultural assimilation. We discover that there is a remarkably stable hierarchy of preference of integration outcomes, which is a matter of wide spread consensus in both our countries among different social groups and people with different attitudes on immigration. Using the British data we also show an integration penalty for immigrants of non-white origins. Our article places public opinion of immigrant integration at the heart of a rapidly expanding research agenda into the social and political impacts of immigration.     

Conceptualizing color-evasiveness: using dis/ability critical race theory to expand a color-blind racial ideology in education and society

Abstract

Color-blind racial ideology has historically been conceptualized as an ideology wherein race is immaterial. Efforts not to ‘see’ race insinuate that recognizing race is problematic; therefore, scholars have identified and critiqued color-blindness ideology. In this paper, we first examine Gotanda’s (1991) identification and critique of color-blind racial ideology, as it was crucial in troubling white supremacy. We then explore literature in both legal studies and education to determine how scholars have built upon Gotanda’s intellectual theoretical foundations. Finally, using a Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) framework, we end by expanding to a racial ideology of color-evasiveness in education and society, as we believe that conceptualizing the refusal to recognize race as ‘color-blindness’ limits the ways this ideology can be dismantled.     

Nationalist parties and immigration in Flanders: from Volksunie to Spirit and N-VA

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the literature on the sub-state nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) by investigating the policy positions in the immigration ambit taken by the Flemish nationalist party Volksunie, and by its successors after the party fell apart in 2001. We do so by analysing the party manifestos for all elections between 1978 and 2014. Beyond providing a detailed case study, the article has broader ambitions. The paper bridges the gap between the party literature and the literature on immigration and integration policies. It does so in two ways. First, it relies on a more nuanced categorisation of policy positions proposed by the immigration policy literature, which is absent in the party literature. Second, it draws explicit attention to the nation-building strategy of SNRPs as an intervening explanatory variable, mediating the influence of party competition and ideology.     

Into the IRIS: a model for analyzing identity dynamics in conflict

I propose a lens model for understanding how core identities (ethnic, sectarian, racial or national) are affected by past interactions and narratives increasing the chances of the outbreak of violent conflict. The model can be used to show how core identities are polarized during conflict escalation and how they might de-polarize during periods of de-escalation and conflict resolution, leading to potential transformation of core identities in post-conflict situations. Northern Ireland will be used to illustrate the Integrated Relational Identity Structure model, showing how conflicting identities have changed, or not, as a result of history, the conflict and the peace process.     

建构家族意识 拯救民族认同——刍议南方回族谱牒中的文化认同

本文试图从回族家谱具体内容来探讨南方回族在历史上对民族文化认同的重构。指出南方回族谱牒是特定政治和社会文化环境中,人们克服认同危机而所作的积极应对的手段,是回族社会内部进行自觉文化认同重构实践的一个组成部分,是南方回族在宗教认同淡化前提下文化认同重构的一种转换和替代。这种历史实践隐含着南方回族发展的一个历史特点,即家族意识的构建和延续在一定程度上加强了南方回族的民族认同。