Rights and Wrongs across European Borders: Migrants, Minorities and Citizenship

Abstract

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link IntroductionAn important underlying concern of the research we are conducting has been the need to explore the ways in which citizenship and identity have been shaped by migration patterns, and the ways in which migration policies and politics relating to minority and migrant groups have themselves been constructed in response to particular understandings of citizenship and national identity (Lessana 1998 The analysis in this paper is organised into four interlinked parts. The first explores the changing terms of some of those debates about citizenship and migration in contemporary European societies and outlines four analytical models that have been used to frame accounts of the position of migrants and minorities in the context of the changing role of the nation-state. We then move on to explore the implications of these analytical models for an analysis of the political and policy agendas about citizenship and immigration. This part draws on empirical examples from research in our four case study countries. In part four we take this analysis a step further by looking at the shifting boundaries of citizenship in the contemporary environment. Finally we conclude by highlighting some of the key themes that follow from the substantive parts of the paper, by focusing specifically on processes of exclusion and inclusion. Conceptual and Research AgendasWe begin by reviewing key conceptual debates that have shaped much of the recent research on the changing dynamics of citizenship, migration and 4 ethnicity in contemporary Europe. Among other themes, scholars have focused on the role that citizenship can and should play in protecting and including minority and migrant groups within multicultural societies (Gutmann 1992;Kymlicka 1995 Kymlicka , 1997Wieviorka 1998) This becomes even more clear if we look at specific issues of public policy that frame contemporary debates, such as the role of 'multiculturalism' in 5 contemporary societies. Christian Joppke, on the basis of a comparative analysis of recent trends in the United States, Germany and Britain has argued that contemporary debates about multiculturalism need to be understood against the background of social movements that demand equal rights and recognition for a range of social groups (Joppke 1996: 449). It is also clear that multiculturalism is inherently contradictory, both in conceptual and political terms, and is often the subject of intense political conflict and debate.Joppke goes on to argue that multiculturalism may be characterised as a 'politics of difference' that fuses egalitarian rhetoric with a stress on authenticity and rejection of Western universalism (Joppke 1996: 449). Any rounded analysis of citizenship and of inclusion and exclusion in Europe has to include a discussion of immigration controls, which are inseparable from the grounds for including some and excluding others. It is at the point ...

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