Volume 29, Number 1, January 2003

Articles
Research note
Reviews
Abstracts

Articles

Reviews

Ellis Cashmore, Greg Oswald, Race and Ethnic Relations in Today's America: Ida Susser and Thomas C. Patterson   9(eds) Cultural Diversity in the United States: A Critical Reader; Joe Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations

Anastasia Christou, Hector R. Cordero-Guzman, Robert C. Smith and Ramon Grosfuguel (eds) Migration, Transnationalization and Race in a Changing New York

Thomas Pettigrew, Hans Krabbendam and Larry J. Wagenaar (eds) The Dutch-American Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert R. Swierenga

Laurence Marlow, Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality

Paul Spoonley, Peggy Levitt, The Transnational Villagers

Cecilia Menjivar, Pierette Honagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica: Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence

Jeffrey Cole, Bridget Anderson, Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour

John W. Critzer, Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder (eds) The Wall around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe

Johan Leman, Dora Kostakopoulou, Citizenship, Identiry and Immigration in the European Union: Between Past and Future

Hans van Amersfoort, Myron Weiner and Michael S. Teitelbaum, Political Demography, Demographic Engineering

Ralph D. Grillo, David Theo Goldberg and John Solomos (eds) A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies

Maria Koumandraki, Reena Bhavani, Rethinking Interventions in Racism

Brad K. Blitz, Bimal Ghost (ed.), Return Migration: Journey of Hope or Despair

Abstracts

Barbara Franz
Bosnian refugees and socio-economic realities: changes in refugee and settlement policies in Austria and the United States
Abstract  Refugee studies scholars have emphasised that refugee law has become immigration law in the North/Western world. This shift in perspective emphasises borders rather than the protection of people. Comparatively little analytical work, however, has been done on the implications these legal and political changes have had on individual refugees. This article addresses some of these effects by comparing asylum, residence, and socio-economic problems of Bosnian refugees in Austria and the USA. It explores the underlying rationale of reception policies and the settlement support schemes primarily responsible for determining refugees’ status and eligibility for benefits. Though the two countries’ refugee relief schemes, the Austrian Bund-Länder Aktion and the American public–private partnership of refugee resettlement, were significantly different (the former restricted legal employment, the latter promoted early economic self-sufficiency), the Bosnian refugees in my sample actually adapted in quite a similar way in both countries. Individual initiative was found to have
a much stronger impact than state policy.
Keywords: Bosnian refugees; Asylum; Resettlement; Temporary protection status; Residence and employment politics
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1: 5-25, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Paul Spoonley, Richard Bedford and Cluny Macpherson
Divided loyalties and fractured sovereignty: transnationalism and the nation-state in Aotearoa/ New Zealand
Abstract New Zealand represents one example of the way in which a colonially-inspired transnationalism linking the country with the UK has been supplemented by new and intensified forms of transnationalism encompassing the Pacific and Asia. Our focus in this paper is on the nature of an emergent Pacific diaspora involving primarily Polynesian communities and the challenges that this transnationalism presents to the state and national identity. The transnationalism of Pacific peoples is reflected in the circulation of people, capital and ideas, the latter increasingly via the Internet, but the nature of transnational linkages is also significantly influenced by changes to ethnic identity and practice, and by the impoverishment of both ‘homeland’ and diasporic communities.    
Keywords: New Zealand; Maori; Pacific peoples; transnationalism; nation-state; circulation
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1: 27-46, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Anniken Hagelund
A matter of decency? The Progress Party in Norwegian immigration politics
Abstract: This article is about the Progress Party and the part it plays in Norwegian immigration politics. The Progress Party has been pivotal in bringing immigration onto the political agenda in Norway, and has won considerable support for its anti-immigration views. Immigration is often seen as one of the most conflict-laden issues in Norwegian politics, and the Progress Party is at the heart of such images. In another sense, however, the Progress Party also plays a unifying role in immigration politics by being the ‘negative outside’ against which all other parties contrast themselves. This article first analyses the Progress Party’s discourse on immigration, and identifies a shift in their problematisations of immigration from primarily depicting it as a problem related to economy and costs, to increasingly focusing on cultural issues and ethnic conflicts. In the latter part of the paper, the Progress Party rhetoric is situated within the dynamics of party politics where all parties are involved in positioning themselves in relation to others, and where the Progress Party often appears as the ‘indecent other’ providing the negative meaning to the ‘decency’ of mainstream parties.
Keywords: Right-wing politics; Immigration politics; Norway; Discourse analysis; Racism
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1:47-65, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Louise Ryan
Moving spaces and changing places: Irish women’s memories of emigration to Britain in the 1930s
Abstract  This paper engages with conceptualisations of place and space to explore the ways in which London has been constructed, encountered and negotiated as a series of racialised and gendered locales. The paper draws upon oral history narratives of 11 women who emigrated from Ireland to Britain in the 1930s.  Arriving in Paddington or Euston station, these young women were confronted with a vast and seemingly unknowable city.  The modern city can be interpreted as potentially liberating for young women as well as potentially threatening and dangerous. In this paper I explore the ways in which these women, now in their late 80s and early 90s, describe their youthful mobility within the city and their active negotiation of places and spaces. As live-in domestic servants these women inhabited an in-between space.  Their ‘home’ place was also their workplace, thus the usual boundaries between work and home, public and private did not apply.  Their free time was associated not with the familial, private, domestic place but with public spaces such as streets, shops, dancehalls and cinemas. However, these Irish women encountered the city not just as a gendered place but also as a racialised environment where their Irishness defined them as ‘other’, alien and outsider. In this paper I aim to discover not only how they encountered the city but also, and more interestingly, what strategies they used to actively negotiate the city in ways that sought to transform its vastness and anonymity into places that were familiar, manageable and enjoyable.
Keywords: Irish women; 1930s; London; Gendered; Racialised; Social networks
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1: 67-82, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Karmen Erjavec
Media construction of identity through moral panics: discourses of immigration in Slovenia
Abstract  With its independence in the 1990s, Slovenia started constructing a new identity through cyclical moral panics. In that process, the media play a decisive role. Journalists, blinded by the myth of objectivity, reduce their role to transmitting the perspective of others, based on the assumption that there is a consensus within society. As loyal followers of the professional ideology, they objectify the xenophobic discourse of the dominant ideology with the creators of such discourse. In media discourse, the triumph of 'objective' journalism creates a consensus regarding the ethnic antagonism between 'us' and 'them', the latter being people south and east of the border, and forms a new 'European' identity for the Slovene people. The prevailing media discourse in Slovenia creates a nation by sharing the same story about national identity in the discursive community.
Keywords: National identity; Immigrants; Migration; Journalism; Moral panic; Former Yugoslavia; Slovenia
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1: 83-101, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Tracey Warren and Nadia Joanne Britton
Ethnic diversity in economic wellbeing: the combined significance of income, wealth and assets levels
Abstract  This paper uses data gathered from the Family Resources Survey to examine ethnic differences in economic wellbeing in Britain. It argues that, although a focus on ethnic variation in income levels is useful, a more comprehensive picture of ethnic economic diversity can be obtained by also taking into account general levels of wealth and assets. This is particularly important in order to obtain a better understanding of how ethnic economic advantages and disadvantages build up over the life-course. It also encourages more attention to be paid to how wealth is accumulated and transferred within families and between generations. The research findings show a complex picture of ethnic economic diversity with some ethnic groups (White, Chinese and Indian) over-represented in the doubly advantaged, asset-rich and income-rich category and a larger number of groups (Black-African, Black-Other, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) who were doubly disadvantaged (being both asset-and income-poor). The paper concludes that the short-term economic position of families in both groups has longer-term consequences in terms of the potential for ethnic economic divisions to intensify.
Keywords: Ethnicity; Economic diversity; Income; Assets; Wealth; Family
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1: 103-119, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Carlota Solé and Sònia Parella
The labour market and racial discrimination in Spain
Abstract  This article analyses the issues raised by immigration into Spain from the specific perspective of entry into the labour market. The first part looks at the mechanisms of discrimination against immigrant workers, and then proceeds to analyse the factors that perpetuate racial discrimination in the labour market, based on the interests and practices of the various social agents (government, employers, trades unions, local workers) in relation to immigrants. We show how the non-EU immigrant labour force suffers from negative discrimination compared to native workers, in terms of both access to jobs and to working conditions, independently of their educational levels, qualifications or prior work experience. This not only gives rise to a loss of human resources available to the host society, but also represents a definite barrier for the integration into the host society of these immigrant groups. As long as immigrants are unable to overcome this vulnerability in the labour market, their socio-economic integration will be impossible.
Keywords: Immigration; Spain; Labour market; Racial discrimination
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1:121-140, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)

Minas Samatas
Greece in ‘Schengenland’: blessing or anathema for citizens’ and foreigners’ rights?
Abstract This paper is a case-study of the actual impact of Schengen implementation by the Greek state security apparatus, and its implication for basic and new rights of Greek citizens and foreigners, vis-à-vis European integration. It is based upon an analysis of special data records, including surveillance of national and alien suspects, asylum and deportations, ‘border repulsion of undesirable persons,’ etc. provided to the press by the Greek Schengen Bureau. Some comparisons are made with other Schengen counterparts. The analysis illustrates those particular geopolitical and sociopolitical control imperatives that actually affect the efficiency of the Schengen Agreement in Greece. Based also on other documented evidence, I conclude that Schengen’s impact is a mixed blessing for Greek and European citizens as regards both their free movement, and also potential violations of their privacy and civil liberties. It is clearly an ‘immigration anathema’ to build a ‘Fortress Europe’, especially as regards Third World immigrants’ and refugees’ rights and life chances in the EU.
Keywords: Greece; Schengen Information System; Fortress Europe; Immigrants; Asylum-seekers
(Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 29 No. 1: 141-156, © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd)