Migration, Citizenship and Transnational Politics: Comparative Perspectives of Western Europe and North America

A peripheral area four decades ago, international migration has become an exceptionally vibrant interdisciplinary field. However, continued progress is impeded by the national orientations of many migration researchers, focusing principally on developments within the very same countries where the researchers themselves reside.  Consequently, researcher tend to miss the inherently international dimension of population movements across borders.  Roger Waldinger (UCLA) and Ruud Koopmans (WZB) will present their most recent work on cross-national research on migration, in discussion with Adrian Favell (Sciences Po, Paris) and Gökce Yurdakul (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). The panel is taking place in the framework of an international trilateral cooperation between UCLA, Sciences Po, HU /WZB, and organized by Gökce Yurdakul (HU) and Marc Helbling (WZB), with generous support from DFG, HU Philosophische Fakultät III and the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences.

Presenters:

Roger Waldinger (UCLA)
Immigrant, Emigrant, Alien: The difference and the difference it makes

The people whom the sociological literature understands as "immigrants" are also emigrants; all arrive as aliens, with many remaining outside the polity for long periods of time.  Whereas conventional assimilation approaches illuminate changes related to the "immigrant" orientation, they overlook the impact of both alien status and the emigrant orientation. Using survey data, I will demonstrate the impact of respondent's and parent's legal status upon arrival in the US and home country connections at time of childhood on the political attitudes and behavior of immigrant offspring during adulthood.

Ruud Koopmans (WZB)
Immigrant citizenship rights in the West and beyond

The literature on citizenship and immigration focuses almost exclusively on Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon immigration countries. However, immigration has never been, and perhaps increasingly is a phenomenon that extends beyond the West. Nevertheless, theories of resilient national integration paths as well as those that posit cross-national convergence around liberal norms have based their conclusions on evidence from this relatively small part of the globe. In this presentation I will compare immigrant citizenship rights in Western Europe and North America to several non-Western immigration countries, including Japan, Israel, Turkey, Kuwait, Argentina, Ghana, and South Africa.

Discussants:
Adrian Favell, Sciences Po, Paris and Gökce Yurdakul, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Moderator:
Marc Helbling, WZB