Martin A. Schain

The extreme-right and immigration policy-making: Measuring direct and indirect effects

The question of who makes immigration policy focuses on the relationship between policy actors and outcomes, but is directly related to the constraints that shape the way that policy-makers make policy. While the radical right in Europe has been generally isolated from making policy, it has been a force in constraining policy development in many countries. A decade ago, Martin Baldwin-Edwards and the author outlined an approach for understanding the politics of immigration. Although they made many references to the extreme right, they never integrated these references into their analytical framework. This contribution is an attempt to deal with that oversight. It first develops an approach to understanding impact on politics and policy, with reference to the French National Front. The objective is to find a way to understand impact in relation to the constraints within which policy-makers shape policy. In the concluding section, the author returns to an analysis of implications for comparative analysis.

The Politics of Immigration in France, Britain, and the United States

The Politics of Immigration Development of French Immigration Policy Understanding French Immigration Policy Politics of Immigration in France Development of British Immigration Policy Understanding British Immigration Policy Politics of Immigration in Britain Development of US Immigration Policy Understanding US Immigration Policy Politics of Immigration in the United States

The national front in France and the construction of political legitimacy

The National Front in France has experienced a meteoric increase in support since 1981, attacting about ten per cent of the vote in elections at every level. The principal issues on which the party has won support ‐ immigration and security ‐ have become key domestic issues. This article analyses the rise of the party and the inability of the established parties of the right to maintain the confidence of their supporters. It also examines a process of construction of legitimacy in which political elites of right and left participated. Finally, an evaluation is made of the National Fronts ability to maintain and expand its electoral strength.

The Development of Radical Right Parties in Western Europe

Throughout Western Europe, popular support for radical xenophobic parties has grown dramatically over the past two decades. Indeed, parties supporting ideologies that had been relegated to the lunatic fringe in the postwar period have now established a significant and enduring presence in most Western European states. Populist calls for the expulsion of all peoples of immigrant descent and a return to a “traditional” and “racially pure” Europe are finding growing resonance and providing the leaders of the radical right with increasing political leverage. The numbers alone are striking: the Swiss People’s Party received 23 percent of the popular vote in a 1999 election; the National Front in France received 17 percent of the nationwide vote in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, as did the Norwegian Progress Party; Jorg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party moved from nearcollapse to second place in the 1999 election, with 27 percent of the national vote; in Belgium, the Flemish Bloc has demonstrated consistent growth and in the most recent election received 13 percent of the vote in Flanders. The list could easily go on. Clearly, these parties can no longer be dismissed as anomalous and ephemeral effects of unfavorable societal shifts; they have established a significant and enduring presence on the partisan scene and display a growing capacity to form voters’ opinions and affect policy formation.

Immigration and Politics

Since the period of the Third Republic France has welcomed, and at times encouraged, successive waves of immigration. Almost 10 per cent of the French population in 1982 was foreign-born, a percentage considerably higher than that of any other European country and 30 per cent higher than the foreign-born population of the USA. During this long period of immigration, a network of social and political institutions — among which have been the centralised school system, the Catholic church, the army, trade unions and the political parties of the Left — have played an effective role in integrating new immigrants into French social, economic and political life. Although there were numerous instances of anti-immigrant violence, some anti-immigrant movements and high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment in France since the turn of the century, these institutions have been relatively successful in limiting and controlling ethnic-based social violence. They have also managed to keep issues of immigration and ethnic divisions on the periphery of the political process.

Policy‐making and defining ethnic minorities: The case of immigration in France

Abstract This article analyses the transformation of the immigration issue in the French political arena. From a set of issues resolved almost entirely at the local level in the early 1970s, immigration evolved during the 1980s to become a national policy issue. By the late 1970s, the distribution of immigrants among municipalities governed by the Left and the Right became a public issue. This could not be resolved at the local level, and the existing consensus broke down. Within the new institutional frameworks that were set up to tackle the problems of integration, the supposed negative aspects of immigration became more visible and public. National party struggles, combined with greater mobilisation by the immigrants themselves, ensured that the issues became more visible and less easily amenable to solution. This article argues that it was the conflict over the portrayal of immigration issues that quintessentially brought about the change in the arena within which policy decisions were made.

The shaping of European immigration policy during the past decade

The process set in place in 1999 in Tampere anticipated the development of supranational decision-making in the development of immigration policy. Nevertheless, there has been an accelerating process of intergovernmental agreements, not only around border control, but also around integration and visa controls. While the supra-national initiatives by the Commission that have dealt with the harmonisation of immigration policies have generally languished, the intergovernmental initiatives that have focused on enhanced immigration control and security considerations, and have made considerable progress.

Race and ethnicity in context: international migration, political mobilization, and the welfare state

ABSTRACT This manuscript reviews the literature on race and ethnicity in the political context. It discusses the most important scholarship on international migration, political mobilization, and the welfare state to date, to identify current gaps and emerging lines of inquiry. Future studies are needed to better understand the mobilization of immigrants by political parties, the role of local politics for a national electoral mobilization, and the relationship between local and national political areas for policy development.

Driving integration: how is it done

ABSTRACT The present dilemma of immigrant integration in the West is, that for previous generations of immigrants in Europe and the United States, education and politics were strong engines that drove integration. However, these engines have not worked so well for this current wave of immigration, despite emerging progress. In this review, I examine the chapters on education and politics. Two questions emerge: first, with regard to education, how much can the ineffectiveness of the education system be attributed to the cultural challenges of immigration, compared to the challenges of class, with implications for immigrants and natives as well? and second, with regard to politics, is the problem not just the numbers of minority representatives, but how they are organized, and for what purpose – indeed, if they have a purpose?

The Success and Failure of Integration Policy in France and Britain: Convergence of Policy and Divergence of Results

During the past 50 years two sets of events have had a profound influence on the development of public policy on immigrant integration in Europe. The first is the challenge to public order posed by urban unrest in France beginning in the early 1980s and in Britain beginning in the late 1950s. In each of these countries, the public policy response to this urban crisis has involved important elements of multiculturalism, as part of a strategy to maintain public order. In each country the public policy response has also been influenced by other political considerations of domestic politics, but policies that at least implicitly recognized differentiated community (or “minority”) needs and benefits have been common to each. The second set of events is generally related to the challenge of Islamic terrorism and the recognition that some of it has domestic roots.