Nativism and the Obsolescence of Grand Narrative: Comprehending the Quandary of Anti-Immigration Groups in the Neoliberal Era

Abstract

Fundamental to the neoliberal era has been the systemic obsolescence of grand narratives of group and national exceptionality. This paper contends that the demise of grand narratives has proved particularly detrimental to anti-immigration groups in the developed Western economies. The obsolescence of metanarratives has made it difficult for anti-immigration organisations to enlist the virtue of national exceptionalism due to their increasing inability to effectively rationalise*in cultural terms*the exclusion of the foreign 'other'. Consequently, what is slowly emerging from the core of antiimmigration proponents on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean is an unprecedented mass rationale for peremptory privilege through immigration policy that is largely free of traditional conceptions of otherness (race, merit, industriousness, etc.).

Contextualizing Anti-Immigrant Attitudes of East Europeans

“…Additional controls included education, urban/rural residence, age, gender, marital status, and media consumption. Some studies have included the role of political narratives (Mols & Jetten, 2014;de Oliver, 2011) and political stances (Rydgren, 2008) on immigration and refugee issues; however, valid cross-national measures of these concerns were not available in our dataset. Operationalizations are explained in Appendix 1.…”

Advancing geographical understanding

“…She makes the case for developing new concepts and metaphors that speak to existing grand narratives, for “new terminology and new metaphors don’t just reflect changing realities; they create shifts in the narrative, open the way for shifting realities, make change possible.” Drawing on David Harvey’s (1999: 111) discussion of how different narratives shape the way environmental justice issues are perceived, she persuasively argues for a direct engagement with the narratives people use to interpret science. Other recent work in the human geographic literature also treats grand narratives as central objects of critical analysis, including Pedynowski’s (2003) study of the way a particular narrative about science limits understanding of what science has to offer, Dittmer’s (2007) examination of how “metanarratives” of Russian national identity have influenced debates over North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Dittmer’s use of the term metanarrative is more akin to my use of grand narrative), Pain’s (2009) analysis of the way a particular narrative of “globalized fear” has been deployed in studies informed by critical geopolitics perspectives, and de Oliver’s (2011) investigation of how the obsolescence of grand narratives of group or national exceptionality have undermined the standing of anti-immigrant organizations.…”

Bringing Them “Out of the Shadows”: Analyzing the Movement to Reframe the Immigration Policy Narrative in Utah

“…One of the most important aspects of the contemporary immigration policy narrative has been the obsolescence of the grand metanarrative (de Oliver 2011;Lakoff and Ferguson 2006). Historically, anti-immigrant forces were galvanized by the creation and maintenance of in-group and out-group contrasts that were explicitly based on race and ethnicity through the process of othering: creating "a national standard of 'us' against which a foreign 'them' can be recognized" whereby competition over scarce resources is threatened by the foreign other (de Oliver 2011: 978).…”