Historical Minorities and Migrants : Foes or Allies ? (original) (raw)
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1982; Wihtol de Wenden, 1988). Minorities in each country are of post-colonial, extra-European background, and have a large proportion of Muslims, which entails the comparable issue of the relations between states and Muslim organizations. One must, however, make certain caveats that may explain, to some extent, the differences between patterns of minority incorporation. There is a more developed middle class among British ethnic minorities than among French ones (on the British-Asian middle class, see Cashmore, 1992; Deakins and Ram, 1996). In addition, the political cultures of the ethnic minorities of the two countries differ in significant ways. There is a more traditional and institutionalized brand of Islam among the Pakistanis in Britain than among the North Africans in France. Both West Indians and Asians in Britain originate from democracies with important working-class political movements, while Morocco and Algeria are hardly democratic and have long sought to control the politics of their communities in France and other European countries. This undoubtedly contributes to making the ethnic-minority populations in Britain more competent at political participation and more likely to take interest in the debates of the host-country-the African-Caribbeans because their home culture is heavily shaped by British traditions, and the Pakistanis because they have a strong interest in obtaining provisions on religious education and matters pertaining to religious practice. This type of argument is reminiscent of arguments in terms of ethnicity or race-that is, referring primarily to the ethnic or 'homeland' identities of ethnic minority populations to explain their styles of participation in the politics of their host-society (see, for instance, Moore, 1975; Rex and Tomlinson, 1979). Whilst not denying the relevance of this type of factor, it alone cannot account for the differences: Bousetta (1997) has shown that patterns of community organization among Moroccans vary between France and the Netherlands, and Ireland (1994) has shown that patterns of mobilization among Turks and Italians in French and Swiss cities vary cross-nationally and cross-locally. Alongside the ethnicity argument, a number of works explore relations between state organizations, on the one side, and policies, on the other, in French and British immigration politics. Many immigrants in France came as guest-workers as part of government-sponsored programmes, while most of the migration to Britain was unorganized (Freeman, 1979; Lapeyronnie, 1993: 129-59). The phases of the postwar migration wave in France have tended to follow the British one a decade later, which 1 In France, numbers are difficult to estimate but populations of recent immigrant background probably account for around 8% of the total French population (Castles, 1995: 298); and ethnic minorities account for 8% of the total British population (ibid.: 300).
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