Gary P. Freeman

Modes of immigration politics in liberal democratic states.

The politics of immigration in liberal democracies exhibits strong similarities that are, contrary to the scholarly consensus, broadly expansionist and inclusive. Nevertheless, three groups of states display distinct modes of immigration politics. Divergent immigration histories mold popular attitudes toward migration and ethnic heterogeneity and affect the institutionalization of migration policy and politics. The English-speaking settler societies (the United States, Canada, and Australia) have histories of periodically open immigration, machineries of immigration planning and regulation, and densely organized webs of interest groups contesting policies. Their institutionalized politics favors expansionary policies and is relatively immune to sharp swings in direction. Many European states (France, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium) experienced mass migration only after World War II and in a form that introduced significant non-European minorities. Their immigration politics is shaped by what most see as the unfortunate consequences of those episodes and are partially institutionalized and highly volatile and conflictual. European states until recently sending countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece) deal with migration pressures for the first time in their modern histories, under crisis conditions, and in the context of intensifying coordination of policies within the European Union. We should expect the normalization of immigration politics in both sets of European states. Although they are unlikely to appropriate the policies of the English-speaking democracies, which should remain unique in their openness to mass immigration, their approach to immigration will, nevertheless, take the liberal democratic form.

Migration and the Political Economy of the Welfare State

National welfare states are compelled by their logic to be closed systems that seek to insulate themselves from external pressures and that restrict rights and benefits to members. They nonetheless fail to be perfectly bounded in a global economy marked by competition, interdependence, and extreme inequality. This article explores the consequences of transnational flows of labor both for the status of migrants who move to welfare states and for the viability of welfare states themselves. The consequences of migration for the fiscal and political stability of welfare states are discussed, and it is argued that migration has contributed to the Americanization of European welfare politics. It is concluded that the relatively free movement of labor across national frontiers exposes the tension between closed welfare states and open economies and that, ultimately, national welfare states cannot coexist with the free movement of labor.

Immigrant Incorporation in Western Democracies1

How much variation is there in immigrant incorporation policies and practices across the Western democracies? Concluding that the effort to capture variation in typologies of incorporation schemes is likely to prove both futile and misleading, I propose a radically dis-aggregated perspective that conceives of incorporation as the product of the intersection of migrant aspirations and strategies with regulatory frameworks in four domains – state, market, welfare, and culture. Because some but not all of the regulatory institutions in these domains were created with immigrant incorporation in mind, national incorporation frameworks are not fully cohesive, are constantly changing, and at best can be described as belonging to a handful of loosely connected syndromes.

The developmental genetics of dextrality and sinistrality in the gastropodLymnaea peregra

SummaryThe genetics of body asymmetry inLymnaea peregra follows a maternal mode of inheritance involving a single locus with dextrality being dominant to sinistrality. Maternal inheritance implies that all members of a brood have the same phenotype, however, some broods contain a few individuals of opposite coil. One purpose of this paper is to explain the origin of these anomalous individuals. Genetic analyses of sinistral broods with a few dextral individuals have led to the development of a cross-over model, with the anomalous dextrals originating as a consequence of crossing over either during meiosis or mitosis in the female germ line. The crossover either reconstitutes the dextral gene from previously dissociated parts, or creates a dextral gene by means of a position effect. The probability of a crossover event depends upon the appropriate combination of complementary sinistral chromosomes. Each crossover event has the potential of creating a unique dextral gene. Genetic analyses of dextral broods containing a few sinistral individuals have demonstrated that different dextral genes vary in penetrance.The dextral gene produces a product during oogenesis which influences the pattern of cleavage in the embryo; this cleavage pattern is translated into the appropriate body asymmetry. The other purpose of this paper is to provide an assay for this gene product. Cytoplasm from dextral eggs injected into uncleaved sinistral eggs causes these eggs to cleave in a dextral pattern. Cytoplasm from sinistral eggs has no effect on the cleavage pattern of dextral eggs. While the dextral gene product is made during oogenesis, it does not function in controlling cleavage until just before this process begins.

Evolutionary implications of the mode of D quadrant specification in coelomates with spiral cleavage

In annelids, molluscs, echiurans and sipunculids the establishment of the dorsal‐ventral axis of the embryo is associated with D quadrant specification during embryogenesis. This specification occurs in two ways in these phyla. One mechanism specifies the D quadrant via the shunting of a set of cytoplasmic determinants located at the vegetal pole of the egg to one blastomere of the four cell stage embryo. In this case, at the first two cleavages of embryogenesis there is an unequal distribution of cytoplasm, generating one macromere which is larger than the others at the four cell stage. The D quadrant can also be specified by a contact mediated inductive interaction between one of the macromeres at the vegetal pole with micromeres at the animal pole of the embryo. This mechanism operates at a later stage of development than the cytoplasmic localization mechanism and is associated with a pattern of cleavage in which the first two cleavages are equal.

National Styles and Policy Sectors: Explaining Structured Variation

A vigorous tradition in comparative politics argues that national policymakers develop characteristic and durable methods for dealing with public issues, that these can be linked to policy outcomes, and that they can be systematically compared. More recently, a number of scholars have suggested reversing the direction of causality, claiming that the nature of political issues themselves causes the politics associated with them. This policy sector approach implies that there should be cross-national similarities in the way issues are treated, whatever the styles particular nations adopt. The two approaches need to be integrated into a common framework built around a research strategy that investigates policymaking within specific sectors across multiple national cases. Such an approach can transcend the often sterile debate over whether the policies of nations are unique or are converging by seeking to explain how the nature of issues structures the variation among the policies of nations.

National models, policy types, and the politics of immigration in liberal democracies

Immigration policy can be disaggregated into theoretically and empirically meaningful components which are associated with different issues and patterns of benefits and costs that elicit distinctive modes of politics. A four-part typology identifies concentrated distributive, diffuse distributive, redistributive, and regulatory policies, which predict client, majoritarian, interest group, and entrepreneurial modes of politics, respectively. The utility of the typology is illustrated with respect to policies concerning visas for permanent residence, non-immigrant visas for purposes other than work, temporary labour visas, and political asylum. The case studies generally indicate that immigration policy can be broken down into distinctive types that are associated with predicted modes of politics, but that these patterns are not always consistent across countries with different immigration experiences. Furthermore, the framing of policies is subject to change due to external events and political manipulation. The interaction between national models and policy types should be a central focus of comparative immigration research.

Can liberal states control unwanted migration

The commonly held view that liberal democracies cannot effectively control unwanted migration is unwarranted despite the intensification of migration pressures in recent years. To develop a more accurate position built on less sweeping generalizations, I disaggregate migration policy into four parts: managing legal immigration, controlling illegal migration, administering temporary worker programs, and processing asylum seekers and refugees. A review of the experiences of the liberal democracies with each of these migration challenges indicates that although there are numerous instances of policy failure, there is also considerable capacity to regulate migration. I argue that this capacity is certainly growing, not declining, over time, that some states possess more capacity than others, that the control capacities of particular states vary substantially across the four areas, and that these capacities fluctuate periodically in conjunction with contingent cycles of salience and effort.

Migration policy and politics in the receiving states.

A survey of the politics of immigration in the major receiving states shows a strong pattern of restrictionism in the face of unprecedented pressures for entry, but also amnesties, exceptions on humanitarian grounds, and hesitation to enforce the law. As individual states founder, multilateral strategies abound, but with scant success. The immigration crisis impedes EC progress toward the single market and contributes to opposition to the Maastricht Treaty. Ironically, the failure of states to deal with the crisis may reinforce national prerogatives and capacities with respect to immigration and strengthen rather than erode the distinction between economic migrants and refugees.

Public Opinion in the EU on Immigration from Outside the Community

This article explores the impact of symbolic and instrumental variables on European Union opinion on immigration and asylum. Using Eurobarometer surveys from 1988 to 2000, descriptive and multivariate statistics are employed to measure the impact of prejudice, ideology, attitudes towards the EU, unemployment, economic conditions, migration flows, and individual‐level demographic characteristics on measures of attitudes towards immigration policy and foreigners. Although standard demographic factors are associated with the dependent variables in the manner expected, there are less compelling or inconsistent effects of individual or macro‐level economic variables. The best predictors of immigration positions are attitudinal variables including political ideology, prejudice and evaluations of the EU.