Democratic (In)Equalities: Immigration in Twentieth-Century Western Europe (original) (raw)

HIS4397: Seminar in European History (Postwar Europe and its Borders - A History of Migration and Integration)

One cannot understand contemporary Europe without taking its history of migration into account. Considered by many to have become the epicentre of global migration flows, this process has been - and is still today - fraught with tensions. The immediate postwar political and economic landscape greatly impacted the way migration to Europe developed, from labour recruitment programs and postcolonial migration to increased numbers of refugees and the harmonization of EU asylum policies. As such, this seminar aims to highlight the ideas, institutions, and actors that have influenced the evolution of migration in postwar Europe. The objective is to provide the student with the necessary theoretical and analytical tools to be able to grasp how migration has affected both Europe itself and those entering its borders. Due to the nature of the Seminar, students are expected to come to class prepared to engage in important discussions and debates concerning the main themes, ideas and arguments highlighted in the weekly readings.

Past in the present: migration and the uses of history in the contemporary era

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

This Introduction addresses questions of migration, history, and memory in the context of recent changes in public discourses on immigrant integration in Europe, focusing on how history is used to make claims about the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. We highlight how these debates are often framed in a nostalgic tone that sustains categorizations and classifications of the population in terms of 'natives', who are allegedly historically rooted, and non-natives, lacking historical roots. To shed light on this process, we put forward the notion of historical repertoires to refer to ways that views of history are used to evaluate and justify the present. We lay out three possible components of these repertoires, showing their utility in analysing the debates discussed in the six European case studies in this issue (Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece). We also consider some parallels with the United States in how the history of immigration is remembered and used in public debates and political discourse.

Facing Migration History in Europe: Between Oblivion and Representation

2006

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Migration and Differentiated Citizenship: on the (Post-)Americanization of Europe

2006

The pluralization of our society goes on, regardless of the French desire to restore the republican roots through the debate concerning the Islamic veil in the schools, regardless of Germany's attempts to impose a Leitkultur, regardless of the researchers' reflections around the political issue of what "integration" really means. This pluralization, which is unquestionably not only related to the phenomenon of migration, challenges the European national societies in three different ways. Firstly, by the constant ambivalence between the national identity discourse and the supranational construction of a European State. Secondly, by the internal differentiation of the civil society, which still only recognizes itself as a unity in the (accepted) difference. Thirdly, through the nation-state differentiations of belongings, which partially get disconnected from the territory and honoured through interlaced judicial claims, as shown by the topic of undocumented immigrants' access to health care. These dynamics of differentiation and of pluralization will here be pointed as "Americanization" of Europe, which is imposing itself "from below", while awaiting regulation "from above".

Ricciardi, Toni (2020). The transition from colonialism to the migration policies in Europe: 28-38.

Europe between Migrations, Decolonization and Integration (1945-1992), 2020

Over the last decades, an increasing number of countries have experienced a prolonged transition in the nature of the migration to which they are subject: countries that were historically lands of emigration are becoming lands of immigration. European states have alternated between policies favouring the restriction and promotion of migration, depending their own perceived economic and geopolitical needs. Until the French Revolution, Europe had considered immigration a resource and not a scourge, and European imperialism has probably sown the seeds of distrust and racism that continue to pervade the world today. The chapter aims to analyse the transition from colonialism to the migration policies in the 1950s, using international migration as an interpretative key. In particular, adopting a European perspective, the chapter focus on the continuity, discontinuity, and evolution of these policies on a global scale.