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» NEW! » Heckmann & Schnapper (eds.) - The Integration of Immigrants in European Societies:

Heckmann, Friedrich and Schnapper, Dominique. The Integration of Immigrants in European Societies: National Differences and Trends of Convergence, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110507324

This book is one product of the EFFNATIS project (1998-2000) studying integration policy and its effects in eight European countries. Researchers from Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands took part in the project which was coordinated by the European forum for migration studies at the University of Bamberg (efms).

European societies have experienced large scale immigration since the end of World War II. The illusion of temporary immigration has disappeared and confronts the new immigration countries with the necessity of integrating the new groups. The integration of migrants is a challenge to the established patterns of nation building and to welfare state policies. European societies are struggling with the problem of how to include the immigrants in their social structures.
In this situation a search for "models" has occurred and different national patterns of integration are being discussed as to their relative merits or problems. A prevailing discourse in Europe compares images of different national patterns: for instance, a French republican, culturally unifying, universal model is confronted with British or Dutch "multiculturalism", and with a German social policy orientation towards migrants. According to this "national difference paradigm" there is an "Intégration à la Française" linked to the tradition of nation building since the foundation of the Republic and aiming at a culturally homogenous nation. British or Dutch "multiculturalism", according to these images, seem to be willing to retain cultural differences and ethnic identities of migrants. And Germany, due to its "Volk" centered ethnic nation concept, supposedly, has problems of accepting immigrants as citizens, but nevertheless includes them in almost all social policy institutions. The texts in this book will compare these images with past and present integration policies on an empirical basis.