Aristide R. Zolberg

The Next Waves: Migration Theory for a Changing World

In the last quarter of a century, migration theory has undergone fundamental change, moving from the classic “individual relocation” genre initiated by Ravenstein a century ago, to a variety of new approaches which nevertheless share important elements: they tend to be historical, structural, globalist and critical. Historicization implies a constant modification of theoretical concerns and emphases in the light of changing social realities, and commitment to a critical approach entails a view of research as one element in a broader project concerned with the elucidation of social and political conditions. The article uses elements from two major theoretical traditions — a modified world-systems approach and state theory — to project current trends. Global inequality is considered as a structural given. The article then reviews major topics, including the persistence of restrictive immigration policies as barriers to movement, changing patterns of exploitation of foreign labor, liberalization of exit from the socialist world and the refugee crisis in the developing world. It concludes with a brief consideration of the normative implications of these trends.

Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States

Applying an original theoretical framework, an international group of historians and social scientists here explores how class, rather than other social bonds, became central to the ideologies, dispositions, and actions of working people, and how this process was translated into diverse institutional legacies and political outcomes. Focusing principally on France. Germany, and the United States, the contributors examine the historically contingent connections between class, as objectively structured and experienced, and collective perceptions and responses as they develop in work, community, and politics. Following Ira Katznelsons introduction of the analytical concepts, William H. Sewell, Jr., Michelle Perrot, and Alain Cottereau discuss France; Amy Bridges and Martin Shefter, the United States; and Jargen Kocka and Mary Nolan, Germany. The conclusion by Aristide R. Zolberg comments on working-class formation up to World War I, including developments in Great Britain, and challenges conventional wisdom about class and politics in the industrializing West.

International Factors in the Formation of Refugee Movements.

On the basis of detailed case studies by the authors of the principal refugee flows generated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America from approximately 1960 to the present, it was found that international factors often intrude both directly and indirectly on the major types of social conflict that trigger refugee flows, and tend to exacerbate their effects. Refugees are also produced by conflicts that are manifestly international, but which are themselves often related to internal social conflict among the antagonists. Theoretical frameworks for the analysis of the causes of refugee movements must therefore reflect the transnational character of the processes involved. This paper sets forth such a framework and points to the policy implications of the proposed reconceptualization.

The Limits of the Liberal State: Migration, Identity and Belonging in Europe

What are the contemporary ‘limits of the liberal state’ with respect to immigration, citizenship and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in contemporary Europe? The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies examine how recent developments in Europe raise new questions regarding the relationship between liberalism, migration, identity and belonging. In this introduction, we identify three major themes that run through the papers in the issue—the use of liberal norms by states for exclusionary purposes; the possibility of the emergence of ‘illiberal liberalism’; and the extent to which identity politics and policy-making may be increasingly transcending and transforming the limits of the liberal democratic state in Europe. After briefly presenting these three themes, we summarise the arguments of the individual authors and suggest possible directions for future research.

Global migrants, global refugees : problems and solutions

Aristide R. Zolberg Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship at the Graduate Faculty, New School University, New York. Peter M. Benda is Associate Director of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Program on International Policy Attitudes, Washington D.C.

Why Not the Whole World? Ethical Dilemmas of Immigration Policy

The title of this article is inspired by a question raised by Herman Melville in the face of the first American “immigration crisis” occasioned by the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. On this basis, this article discusses arguments on behalf of “open borders.” Although under present world circumstances this is not realistic, this stance remains vital for a normative discussion of immigration policies.

Are the Industrial Countries under Siege

Driven by a sense of crisis, immigration has risen to the top of the industrial world’s political agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are suggestions that the industrial states are under siege, and that drastic countermeasures are required to deter the invaders. A recent headline in The New York Times announced a “Post-war Peak in Refugees and Migrants”, and went on to proclaim in its second line, “People on the Move Tax Nerves and Resources”. (The New York Times, 31 March 1991: E3). In the 1980s, a leading American senator asserted that the United States had “lost control of its borders”, and that in the face of recurring flows of uninvited refugees, the American people suffered from “compassion fatigue”1.

Patterns of International Migration Policy: a Diachronic Comparison

Global conditions shape international migrations by determining the dispositions of individuals toward movement as well as of the states in which they live or seek to enter toward potential population flows. The paper focuses on the policy responses of states in three historical periods, the early modern, the XlXth century, and the contemporary, with special emphasis on the role of western states in patterning labor migrations and refugee flows. An attempt is made to account for the shift from a trend toward liberal exit and entry policies in the XlXth century to one involving highly restrictive entry policies on the part of potential receiving states, and a combination of restrictive exit with forced departure in other parts of the XXth century world.

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES: MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., MALCOLM X, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR BLACK EQUALITY IN AMERICA

a timely view that multiculturalism as a policy is not working as efficaciously in Canada as it has often been sold to be dispelling in Creese’s words, ‘Canada’s self-promotion as a harbinger of multicultural equality (p. 208).’ Her book reaffirms the need to incorporate country-specific histories and legacies of the past when trying to understand the successes or failures of multiculturalism as a policy to promote immigrant integration.