Chapter 9 - sovereignty and the nation state

Question 1

what is methodological nationalism?

Answer 1

the naturalization of the nation-state by social sciences

Question 2

what does methodological nationalism assume?
3

Answer 2

1. countries are the natural units for comparative studies
2. equate society with the nation-state
3. conflate national interests with the purposes of social science

Question 3

what does the main argument of Wimmer and Glick Schiller focus on

Answer 3

what they perceive as the major, dominant trends in social science thinking of the past century that have shaped migration studies

Question 4

What do Wimmer and Glick Schiller not focus on?

and why

Answer 4

• coterminous currents that contradicted the hegemonic strands (e.g. don’t look at marxism that doesn’t look at nationalism but at capitalism as global system)
• methodological individualism (studies/theories that only focus on small entities

because they don’t shape the social science program

Question 5

what is the connection between social sciences and modern nation-state formation?

Answer 5

epistemic structures and programs of mainstream social sciences have been closely attached to and shaped by the emergence of nation-state formation

*nation-state and social sciences formed in the same time

Question 6

what are the 3 variants of methodological nationalism within social sciences?

+ in what traditions can they mostly be found

Answer 6

1. ignoring or disregarding the fundamental importance of nationalism for modern societies (socialist tradition)
2. naturalization, i.e. taking for granted that the boundaries of the nation-state delimit and define the unit of analysis (empirically oriented tradition)
3. territorial limitation which confines the study of social processes to the political and geographical boundaries of a particular nation-state

Question 7

what does the ‘ignoring’ variant of methodological nationalism entail?

+why?

Answer 7

• ignoring or disregarding the fundamental importance of nationalism for modern societies
• nationalism and nation-state model were taken so routinely as foundational assumptions of theory that they vanished from sight, they weren’t problematized or studied in their own right

why?
partially because of disciplinary division of labor within social science, where the modern condition was accepted as a given that nationalist forms of inclusion and exclusion bind modern societies together

mostly seen in the sociological tradition of social theory

Question 8

Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Parsons

growing/reduced importance of ethnic and national sentiments?

!!!!!!!!!

Answer 8

• differentiation
• rationalization
• modernization

of society gradually reduced the importance of ethnic and national sentiments

!!!!!! is this an example of ignoring variant of methodological nationalism, or how else does it relate to this?

Question 9

what does the ‘naturalization’ variant of methodological nationalism entail?

+why?

Answer 9

• taking for granted that the boundaries of the nation-state delimit and define the unit of analysis
• naturalization produced the container model of society that encompasses a culture, a polity, an economy and a bounded social group (everything that didn’t fit this container model was cut of analytically)

social sciences left no room for transnational and global processes that connected national territories

why?
compartmentalization of the social science project: research was focused on national problems and national data due to connections with national ministries and funding

IR assumed that nation-states are the adequate entities for studying the world, this only changed when non-state institutions emerged

Question 10

what does the ‘territorial limitation’ variant of methodological nationalism entail?

+ what are its effects

Answer 10

• study of social processes is confined to political and geographical boundaries of a particular nation-state
• paradigm of national/internal and international affairs (as state-to-state relation) -> invisibility of transborder and transnational nation-state building: historically state and nation-building was a transborder development rather than of a territorially limited national space

effects:
- theories and histories of democracy have looked at the inner dynamics of evolving democratic polities and lost sight of nationalist principles that historically defined its boundaries
- state building and nation building have become two separate objects of inquiry + state is seen as neutral, excluding that modern state itself has entered into a relationship with the nationalist political project

Question 11

what are the main questions of this article

Answer 11

1. What types of methodological nationalism are there?
2. How has nation-state formation influenced the states’ attitude towards migration and how migration has been conceptualized by the social science?
3. How can/does the transnational view arise?

Question 12

what is the main objective of Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller

Answer 12

to clarify the nature of the barriers of methodological nationalism which have stood in the path leading to a revised social theory that is more transnational

Question 13

What phases of nation building and discourse of immigration are there?

Answer 13

phase 1: prewar era (1870-1918)

phase 2: from WW 1 to the cold war (1918-1945)

phase 3: the cold war (1945-1989)

1990-present

Question 14

nation-building and discourse on immigration in the prewar era

Answer 14

two trends simultaneously:
- nation-state building (industries, tariffs to protect national economy)
- intensive globalization (colonialism, imperialism)

! migration was relatively easy: almost no significant barriers (US exception: 1882 Chinese exclusion act) + no passports or documents required + easy to gain citizenship
- all this due to ‘‘the people’’ defined in terms of shared citizenship rights

migration was mostly for labor/economic reasons
- Ravenstein: international migration and internal migration followed the same laws (therefor he made no distinction between the two): poor to rich + country to town

in this time: ethnic + racial concept began to replace the civic approach to peoplehood (civic approach = shared citizen rights -> easy to gain citizenship after migrating)
- why? to justify colonialism
- effect: nation-state builders systematic effort to erase, deny or homogenize internal cultural and national diversity

migrants began to be conceptualized as continuing to have memberships to their ancestral homelands -> seen as threat to national sovereignty and security
- emigrants also became nationalist: believed that they would get more respect when their motherland gained more prestige

Question 15

social science in the prewar era

Answer 15

social sciences emerged as distinct intellectual enterprises in this era
- social sciences contributed to + was heavily shaped by the transformation of concepts of nation and immigrant

nations were seen as organic holes, nourished by their citizens + nation as races based on blood was popularized globally

sociology: grand schemes of proces (tradition->modernity, community->society)
this made the national framing of these transformations invisible

Question 16

nation-building and discourse on immigration WW1-cold war

Answer 16

WW1 + Great Depression -> reduced degree of global economic integration -> nation-state building + emergence of the container model of social order contained within the nation-state

WW1 -> refugees + distinction friend/foe based on nationality
Great Depression -> less contact between migrants and mother-countries (e.g. less remittances)

an entire central state apparatus of overseeing, limiting and controlling immigration was institutionalized between the wars
- reasons: idea of national community from fighting together against others in WW1
- e.g. clear divide foreigners and nationals within a country: foreigners needed permits, nationals didn’t

Question 17

influence of social sciences concepts + views on immigration WW1-cold war

Answer 17

mainstream idea of immigration developed
influenced by social sciences: immigration was understood through national values and norms

• state with own, stable population + migrants living in liminal state
• advocating assimilation (integration over multiple generations) -> transnational relations (between immigrants and home-country) were defined as transitory phenomena in the natural process of assimilation

Question 18

nation-building and discourse on immigration WW1-cold war

Answer 18

UN + formalized independence -> world as divided into equal significant and sovereign states
+ idea that everyone must belong somewhere

social welfare capitalism/state -> nation as a group of solidarity (membership of this group as privilege, restricted by state borders)

Cold war tensions -> tighter policing borders

new demands for labor were handled with two approaches (both minimizing challenge to the practice of national closure naturalized by social science)
1. England, France, NL: turned to own colonial populations (educated as to having colonial power as motherland)
2. Germany: restrict and control influxes of workers by labor contracts that recruited guestworkers
(3. US combined both)

'’progress’’: US effort for assimilation failed, people kept nationalities -> US politicians developed strategies to help the homelands (in order to get votes)
1960s: US civil rights movement exposed American identity as related to whiteness -> other groups/projects began to elaborate ideologies of cultural pluralism

Question 19

social sciences + nationalism and immigration in the cold war era

Answer 19

people were envisioned as each having only one nation-state

belonging to humanity was thought to require national identity

social sciences didn’t investigate or problematize these assumptions

• almost complete erasure of the historical memories of transnational and global processes in which nation-states were formed and the role of migration within that formation
• national identities and modern states were seen as developed within territory rather than in relationship to global economy and flows of ideas

Question 20

how have social sciences influenced/naturalized mainstream migration studies

Answer 20

describing immigrants

• as political security risks
• as culturally others
• as socially marginal
• as an exception to the rule of territorial confinement

social sciences (migration studies) have faithfully mirrored the nationalist image of normal live

Question 20

new understanding of past and contemporary migration?

Answer 20

• requires moving beyond methodological nationalism (requires concepts and tools outside of the nation-state)
• will always be influenced by social and political forces around us
• many that attempt to escape methodological nationalism drift towards Scylla methodological fluidism (transnational life of migrants as the prototype of human condition) or cosmopolitanism, challenge remains to develop a set of concepts that opens up horizons, as neither of these makes considerable more sense than methodological nationalism

Question 21

authors

Answer 21

Andreas Wimmer (nationalism studies)
Nina Glick Schiller (anthropology)

Question 22

class notes

definition of methodological nationalism

Answer 22

the naturalization of the nation-state by the social science

seeing it as something natural rather than something that needs to be explained

assume that:
- countries are the natural units for comparative studies
- equate society with the nation-state
- conflate national interests with the purpose of social science

Question 23

three variants of methodological nationalism

Answer 23

1. ignoring or disregarding importance of nationalism (e.g. studying UK history by looking at what happened on the territory of the British Isles)
2. naturalization: taking for granted the boundaries of the nation-state define the units of analysis
3. territorial limitation: confine the study of social processes to the political and geo boundaries of nation-states

!! if research takes nationalism into account, than it isn’t methodological nationalism

Question 24

why have social sciences ignored the role of nationalism for modern societies?
lecture

Answer 24

• Marx, Durkheim, Weber believed in power of modernization in reducing nationalism (they thought it was gonna disappear)
• there started to be a division of labour between disciplines, relegating nationalism to history (we looked at what was occuring rather than looking how to determine what to look at)

only the discipline of history started to be interested in nations

leading to ‘‘naturalization’’: belief in a container model

Question 25

methodological nationalism pre-war era

lecture

Answer 25

2 trends:
- nation-state building
- intensive globalization

imperialism

emergence of racial notions of ‘‘the people’’: nationalism and racism

long-distance nationalism

racism grounded in scientific theories

Question 26

Phase 2: from WW1 to cold war
- lecture

Answer 26

• end of the free movement of labour
• closing of borders, inability to migrate
• WW1 created and exacerbated national sentiment
• more border policing
• social science: Migration as assimilation (Chicago school), migrant identities as a security threat

Question 27

social science between the two wars:

• lecture

Answer 27

Social science was mainly focused on measuring how societies could better fit” into the nation-state container”

Question 28

phase 3: the cold war
- lecture

Answer 28

• erasure of historical memory of transnationalism
• decolonization: growth of nationalism
• development of welfare capitalism
• cold war: tighter policing of borders and migration (refugees/guest workers)

Question 29

conclusion of the article
- lecture

Answer 29

• we should recover the history of transnationalism
• we should not fall into …
• all theories highlight some aspects and hide others