Lecture 4 Flashcards
What makes persons, groups or nations?
Groups don’t just exist. They are brought into existence through differentiations and alliances.
Groups can form: to share a passion, To claim/demand something, To defend something. To erase boundaries
Artikel Suvarierol, S. & Kirk, K. (2015)
Neoliberal citizenship rituals
How identities are produces through the relations between migrants, teachers, institutions and the state
Assymetry of power
Responsibilisation ideology: success depends on migrants
–> everyone is the architect of his own fortune
Rite of passage towards belonging
Specific idea of multiculturalism where diversity is ok, but national unnity created through proficience in local language, culture and society.
Article Eriksen (2006). Diversity versus difference; neo-liberalism in the minority debate
Diversity: aesthetic, politically and morally neutral expressions of cultural difference
Difference: relates to group identities/practices which differ from that of the majority society
Diversity / shallow difference (e.g. dishes, dances, cultural artifacts) –> embraced as enriching
(Deep) difference ; marriage practices, political, religious values etc.
Fear it might:
Create conflicts with majorities
Weaken social solidarity in the country
Lead to unacceptable violations of human rights within the minority groups
- -> main caus of social problems assosicated with immigrants and their descendants
- -> often rejected + trigger quests for integration
Simplifications are often applied to “them” but not “ourselves”
Together with derogatory views this creates discrimination, racism and xenophobia
All that threatens a societies ‘core values’ is problematized.
Core values: individual agency/ freedom –> are often automatically attributed to majority group even if this is inaccurate
Example: elders in Norway where majority group often isolates them in care homes and does bit allow them to choose whereas, with migrants, they live in extended families where they have important roles.
Neoliberal idea of society as one of free and self-determined individuals
Focus on individual human rights
Assumption that there are no groups or that groups hinder personal autonomy
–> terms like ‘ethnic group’ or ‘cultural minority’ are often associated with enforced marriages, authoritarian religion, harmful practices etc.
Article Stratton, J., & Ang (1994); Multicultural imagined communities: Cultural difference and national identity in Australia and the USA.
Multiculturalism: the political practice of navigating multicultural societies
How do societies create the idea of national unity in the face of diversity?
Ideological universalism: American dream;
“Everyone-can-make-it” mentality leads to the assumption that difference is “irrelevant” and falling short is a personal failure not a product of unequal chances.
Through experiment:
Difference not based on common shared humanity ; but essential / radical difference?
What is we are not all essentially the same but all essentially different, all unique?
What if we would not take commonality for granted but instead start from the position that each person is unique and that we must work in building commonalities which are never given but must always be achieved?
Article Walker (2020) Equality without equivalence: an anthropology of the common of inequality (not required)
The Amazonian Urarina do not believe in a shared essence but in radical difference.
Commonality and community is then not something we have but something we must work for.
It is never fully constituted and can thus never oppose individual liberty.
Difference as a matter of degree not essence
Others= selves
Willingness to question and change perspective
- Crul (2015)
International migration has changed the make-up of large West European cities dramatically.
Vertovec (2007) used the term superdiversity first to describe the increased diversity in ethnic groups now living in large Western European cities.
- Forty years ago, migrants from a limited amount of countries came to these cities while nowadays cities housing more than 170 nationalities are more rule than exception. However, increased ethnic diversity on its own is not enough for the adjective super to be added.
- Blommaert and Maly (2014) claim that studying superdiversity stands for a higher level of analysis as it supersedes above and beyond single forms of diversity.
- Superdiversity entails axes of difference such as gender, education, age cohorts and generations. There is a growing difference in and between ethnics between generations, women and men and educated and uneducated people. Because of this, a shift is necessary from fixed entities such as ‘the ethnic group’ to a more dynamic interplay between different characteristics and individual members of ethnic groups.
- In other words, a shift from an ‘ethnic’ lens to a multidimensional lens. Crul wants to juxtapose the principal claims of segmented and new assimilation theory to this term superdiversity.
Criticism towards the term superdiversity
conceptual vagueness and lack of clear definition when to call a situation superdiverse
it may describe a new reality but it does not provide a theoretical framework to explain differences in assimilation or integration outcomes
Crul’s criteria for superdiversity
in a city or neighbourhood (based on the increased differentiation between ethnic groups)
There is no an ethnic majority group that is dominant based on its demographic majority position.
Both the number and size of different ethnic groups must be substantial (in the majority-minority context)
Criteria crul
Crul claims that superdiversity can improve our understanding beyond these two grand assimilation theories. The increasing diversity within diversity in ethnic groups when we find within-group differences in second- and third generation concerning educational and labour market outcomes makes us rethink the existing grand theories of assimilation. Ethnic groups are becoming more heterogeneous as we cannot approach people of the ethnic migrant background as if they have the same values, cultural repertoire, skills, opportunities or identity. Segmented assimilation theory suggests that children of migrants can follow three typical patterns: either two possible upward trajectories or one downward variant. In segmented assimilation theory, the ethnic and socio-economic characteristics of the first generation influence the type and/or speed of assimilation pathways. For example, parents not having an higher education usually are not able to help their children with homework, and therefore their children will probably follow a downward trajectory, according to segmented assimilation theory. However, data shows that this is not the case in the second generation as the group that has obtained a higher education diploma in Moroccon and Turkish groups is larger than the group that leaves school early. There are bigger within-group differences than between groups and the education of both father and mother do not explain the differences. A clear indicator Crul finds is the difference between age cohorts: the increase of respondents in higher education is spectacular among the younger cohort as the younger cohort receives more educational support.
Segmented assimilation theory:
- differences in social mobility patterns are explained through differences in group averages between different ethnic groups and/or the majority group. This leads to an overemphasis on ethnic group characteristics and socio-economic background characteristics of the first generation.
Crul’s critique -> He asserts that the within-group differences result from changing attitudes and choice within the second generation itself. This is done from an intersectional approach.
- Segmented assimilation theory claims that it can explain ethnic groups’ social mobility regardless of national context.
Crul claims that national contextual factors play a fundamental and defining role that can drastically affect outcomes by making use of the integration context theory by Crul & Schneider, 2010.
-> national context different in Stockholm (free and widely available preschool, more migrants were educated in Turkey and in Sweden has a prominant educational instiutional arrangement) vs Berlin (negligble amount of migrants were education, costly & less available preschool): higher drop-out rate migrant children in Berlin, difficulties with taking up apprenticeships, Stockholm more children went into the academic track, more upward social mobility.
Upward mobility is characterised by a favourable school context and parents who provide positive educational support. There are more similarities across ethnic groups than within ethnic groups.
Ersanilli & Koopmans (2010)
Ersanilli and Koopmans (2010) compare levels of socio-cultural integration of naturalised and non-naturalised immigrants in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
Socio-cultural integration is measured by:
host-country identification
proficiency and use of the host-country language
interethnic social contacts
In this paper, on the basis of the assumption that easily accessible citizenship promotes sociocultural integration, two hypotheses are tested
Do naturalised immigrants display a higher level of integration than non-naturalised immigrants?
Do immigrants in countries with few preconditions for naturalisation show higher levels of socio-cultural integration?
Findings:
Naturalisation is positively associated with socio-cultural integration only in those countries (France & Germany) that have traditionally required a certain degree of cultural assimilation from their new citizens.
Host-country identification is enhanced by easily accessible naturalisation, linguistic and social integration are not.
Limited cultural assimilation conditions tied to citizenship may be helpful in promoting socio-cultural integration.
The allowance of dual nationality does not have the negative effects that are sometimes ascribed to it (France who unconditionally allows dual citizenship also is also the country where the positive effects of naturalisation on socio-cultural integration are the strongest)
Different paradigms of naturalisation: naturalisation as a means of integration versus naturalisation as a crowning of a completed integration process. ius soili: citizenship is determined by the territory of a state on which you are born.
ius sanguinis: citizenship is determined by nationality or ethnicity of one of both your parents.
3.Schinkel (2013)
Schinkel discusses in which way social scientific measurements of immigration integration operate as a form of social imagination. Social imagination is the routinized and professionalized visualization of social life.
Through these social scientific measurements -> images of society are produced that feed into larger social imaginaries.
Schinkel argues that there is a culturist discourse that has many similarities to racism. He takes the Dutch discourse as an example, while many Western European countries have this discourse, and explains that this discourse demarcates the boundaries of society by rendering objectively observable the non-integrated who are considered to reside ‘outside society’. Through this, an image of society is produced that is morally cleansed. The social problems are relegated to a domain outside of society, which consists of people who need to integrate.
Measurements of immigrant integration produce immigrants as objects of problematization due to the word immigrant not being neutral. For example, second-generation immigrants, who have never migrated themselves are included under the rubric of immigration. This includes them als an object of problematization.
Dutch discourse on minorities, immigration and integration is historically characterized by three phases:
- a pluralist phase, in which the presence of guest workers precluded talk of integration
- a phase in which emphasis lay in structural inequalities pertaining to work and education
- a culturalist phase in which emphasis lays on cultural differences
This third phase is characterized by an explicit awareness of the failure of supposed multiculturalism. Culturalism can be seen as a functional equivalent of racism: it entails the idea that differences between individuals and groups are cultural, not biological or other ‘natural’ differences. Different cultures are incompatible and therefore should not be mixed.
Characteristics culturalism in current Dutch discourse by Schinkel (2007)
- focus on various social problems (ranging from nuisance, crime to emancipation of women)
- essentialist notion of bounded cultures is presupposed
- integration not seen as a group process or something that has two sides but as an individual matter -> individuals are or are not integrated
- culture is seen as the ultimate explanation for the problems focused on
- culture is seen as potentially intrinsically problematic and is seen as incompatible with the dominant culture
with the dominant culture
Dominant culture is seen as secular, enlightened and tolerant. People who belong to another culture and are not seen as well-integrated fall outside of society -> society is the realm without problems, problems ensure from persons outside society.
Ocular centres (institutions specialized in social imagination): authoritative and policyinfluencing measurement of integration by semi-governmental research agencies. Examples of these ocular centres are surveillance systems, immigration databases, financial oversight institutions and regulatory bodies (SCP, WODC)
SCP measures sociocultural integration by 2 factors -> 1. the number of contacts with autochthonous or native Dutch by allochtones or non-natives and 2. the degree to which society’s norm and values are shared by immigrants but also acknowledges how the concept integration is contested as it will always be normative and evaluative.
Five characteristics of the social imagination articulated in Dutch integration research
- Individualization and de-individualization of integration -> it is seen as the individual’s responsibility while entire cultures can be held responsible.
- Selective attribution of modernity and non-modernity
- Dispensation of integration and ethnicity of autochthonous Dutch citizens
- Projection of the society vs outside society differentiation by means of genealogization of integration (e.g. still counting second-generation immigrants as immigrants)
- Virtualization of citizenship -> citizenship is seen as a possibility instead of an actuality
Crul, et al. (2019)
Superdiverse neighbourhood -> describes a neighbourhood in which there is no longer a numerical ethnic majority group. In these super diverse situations, the integration process is different than in traditional assimilation or integration situations as the migrants and their children no longer integrate solely into the majority group but into an amalgam of groups. As the former dominant group tends to draw a sharp boundary between their own group and the other ethnic minority groups (increase in support for anti-immigration parties) -> stagnation of integration as predicted by traditional assimilation theories.
