An international conference organised by the Ethnobarometer Programme and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, with the sponsorship of the European Commission

Programme
Abstracts
Proceedings

'Why do some immigrants do better than others? A comparative study for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland ' (Thomas Straubhaar, Hubertus Hille and Heinz Werner)
‘From migration policy to migration policy-making: toward a political sociology approach’ (Giuseppe Sciortino) [Abstract]
'Political culture and immigration: the Italian case' (Umberto Melotti) [Abstract]
'International trafficking in human beings and its impact on the process of integration' (Ferruccio Pastore and Giuseppe Sciortino)
Discussant: Hassan Bousetta

This contribution sets out to explore immigrant ethnic mobilisation within north-west European migration receiving societies. It does so mainly in the context of local politics and on the basis of empirical evidence gathered among Moroccan communities in three national settings (France, the Netherlands, and Belgium). The objective of the paper is to discuss the impact of local institutions on the collective socio-political dynamics at work within immigrant ethnic communities. The paper builds upon a critical interpretation of the institutional political sociology of ethnic mobilisation. While the paper converges with the institutionalist position holding that the configuration of power constrains immigrant’s participatory opportunities, it identifies a set of three major theoretical limitations associated with this paradigm. These latter can be summarised as follows: 1) An institutional approach tends to endorse a simplified conception of the political system and/or the public sphere leading to the level of infra-politics being ignored; 2) An institutional approach tends to blur both the nature and strategies of local actors through an overemphasis on the active role of institutions and policies; 3) An institutional approach often misses the link with the symbolic dimensions of political interactions. The paper goes on to argue for a refined institutional approach suitable for to reconciling with the three aforementioned theoretical difficulties. In a final section, an attempt is made to establish the validity of the proposed approach as a basis for comparative research on local politics.

A large part of social life within a community takes place through organisations. People meet in sporting clubs, religious organisations, social-cultural organisations etc. These organisations shape the way in which people live together within the community and, by so doing, partially determine the community's structure. With regard to the different ethnic groups in the Netherlands community structure bears significance as to the way in which these ethnic groups relate to Dutch society. For instance, an inward-looking ethnic community will stand at a greater distance from the rest of society than an outward-looking community that, apart from being internally organised, maintains many relations with non-ethnic organisations. In the latter case the ethnic community is not just well-organised, but also well-integrated into Dutch society. Ethnic organisations and the relations between them can be studied from various theoretical perspectives. In this paper we want to focus on the civic community approach, where the emphasis is on collective action and the working of democracy. Networks of ethnic organisations not only contribute to the political power of the ethnic community, they may also contribute to the civic culture of the polity and thereby facilitate collective action. Linkages between ethnic organisations are studied through so-called interlocking directorates: persons who serve simultaneously on the governing board of two or more ethnic organisations. We argue that interlocking directorates create social trust within an ethnic community and thus add to its civic culture. For various ethnic communities in Amsterdam the degree of civic culture is studied. Finally we relate the degree of civic culture to the degree of political participation and to the confidence migrants have in local political institutions.  

Without doubt, European integration reconfigures our understanding of contemporary European migration policy and politics by establishing new migration policy competencies at EU level. The resulting 'Europeanisation' implies not only that there are new institutions and laws at EU level, but that these institutions and laws possess the capacity to affect national political contexts. The EU context is, therefore, shaped by its member states, but also possesses the potential to feed back into national political structures. To illustrate these points, this paper explores the relationship between these new competencies and the scope for emergence of new forms of political action at EU level that have 'migrant inclusion' as their objective with potential spill-over effects into national political contexts. The paper establishes a close relation between the EU's institutional context and the forms of political action and types of political actor that are privileged at EU level. By doing this, the paper illustrates supranational limits to ethnic mobilisation, while also demonstrating the emergence of a distinct 'migrant's interests' agenda at EU level. Finally, through an analysis of pro-migrant political activity through groups such as the Starting Line Group and the EU Migrant's Forum, the paper emphasises the key role played by the Commission and European Court of Justice and, thereby, demonstrates the importance of technocratic and judicial paths to EU level migrant inclusion.

The paper presents a normative analysis focusing on (a) the inadequacy of various multicultural conceptual strategies based on such things as respect, recognition, authenticity, etc. and (b) the implications, stronger than liberals seem to realise, of freedom and equality taken seriously. There are no major liberal objections even to secession, so long as it derives from coherent procedures (referenda or plebiscites may be such, depending on the details). The paper argues that the most difficult problems concern not the normative justification of the hypothetical outcome, but the drawing of the appropriate boundaries and thus will discuss questions such as ' who is to decide?' and 'on what territorial basis?'

Drawing on my research and experience in four west European countries – Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium – with additional reference to Germany and Scandinavia, this paper offers an overview of the state-of-the-art in European integration research. Its aim is not to simply synthesise studies of ‘integration strategies’ in these different countries - with a view to pinpointing ‘best practices’, etc. – as a conventional policy report might do (although I do discuss those recent studies which have done just this). Rather, I seek to problematise the relationship between academic knowledge and policy constructions in this field, to show how nearly all current thinking on integration is bound up within a reproduction of nation state and nation-society centred reasoning, which may increasingly fail to represent the evolving relationship between new migrants or ethnic minorities and their host ‘societies’ in Europe. I argue that the (sometimes hidden) framing of the integration ‘paradigm’ can be seen equally in comparative research on immigration politics and policy in Europe, as in current national survey and census based studies on the behaviour and identities of immigrant populations. To break with these restrictions, we need to conceive of doing research which makes the nation state and/or nation-society one among several structuring variables behind the actions of immigrants and minorities and their interaction with existing European populations. Throughout, the general argument of the text is supported by a detailed literature review and discussion in the footnotes. The study also attempts to put into practice a thoroughly reflexive approach to sociological work in this area, which pays close attention to the political and social contextual factors, and the material conditions of production, which have caused certain types of research and policy intervention to be made.

There is no doubt that the ethnic question will be a continuous influence on political and economic relations in post-Soviet space for several decades. While the population in the New Independent States (NIS) has experienced a long period of socialist unification, forced mixing and displacement, the result has not been a destruction of ethnic and religious identity and boundaries. The USSR dissolution process was the main trigger-reason of separatism. A rebellion of Karabakh's Armenians against Azerbaijan, separatist wars in Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, and in Russia show how far territory delimitation can move. In the NIS we already have hundreds of various ethnic and political conflicts, and in many cases - with the claims of territorial independence. The major zones of ethnic conflicts have already developed and are shaping an integral system. The most dangerous situation is in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan has the potential problem not only with Karabakh's Armenians, but with separatist intentions of Lezgins and Talish population. Some internal disputes can arise, and the ‘Crimean Question’ in Ukraine is one of them. In Russia – the most ethnically divided society of the former Soviet Union – the hotbeds of interethnic tension include three dangerous long-term sources of instability. These are the following: Northern Caucasus where some republics are actually on the verge of ethnic wars; Volga region where the major interethnic tension are in the Tatarstan Republic; Eastern Siberia – where the inter-ethnic tension is aggravated by separatist ambitions of Tuva. The present situation is fraught with multiple interethnic clashes that can provoke unpredictable political effects in the Eurasian continent. This paper will analyse in comparative perspective these separatist trends in the post-Soviet space in order to uncover their common root-causes.

Since 'peripheral' secession is the norm in international politics, the existing literature customarily defines it as a movement developing in the periphery against the centre. This paper questions such common assumption by raising the possibility that secession may be propelled by the centre. A working definition of 'central secession' or 'secessionism by the centre' will be limited to those cases where a powerful nationalist movement operates from within the core or dominant nation(ality).The focus will be on the break-up of Yugoslavia – whose disintegration was consistently perceived by public opinion as a conflict of secessionist republics opposed by, and confronted with, a unitary state. A brief geo-political excursus of recent secessionist movements will serve to highlight the singularity of the Yugoslav case. As international norms normally militate against all forms of separatism, nationalist movements do not necessarily develop an open secessionist vocabulary when dealing with international actors. In the case of Serbia, the rhetoric was adamantly unitarian, anti-secessionist, even anti-nationalist. It emphasised the defence of territorial integrity at all costs. Thus, the substance of the nationalist lexicon was intentionally left to the Republics' opposition. In this way, the centre could cast itself as the spotless saviour of the country's integrity versus a 'treacherous' periphery. On the contrary, the hidden agenda of the regime was ethnic separation – of Serbs from non-Serbs. In order to avoid a possible coup, the regime had to persuade the military establishment of the inevitability of the break-up by launching the army into a swift war impossible to win. In fact, the attack on Slovenia convinced the JNA (Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija, Yugoslav People's Army) that defending Yugoslav integrity by pure coercion was unattainable. The rhetoric of Yugoslav unity, supposedly defended by Belgrade, was a deceit. It served two main purposes: one external, namely to convince the international community that Belgrade's option was preferable in order to preserve the existing status quo; the other internal, namely to convince the Yugoslav army that they were fighting for the unity of the country.

During its first year of operation the Ethnobarometer Project has gathered detailed empirical material on about 20 cases in which the quest for autonomy/independence is currently the source of open conflicts and/or political tensions in Western and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space.
   With the recrudescence of ethno-territorial conflict/tensions in recent years and, particularly, with the explosion of war first in Chechnya and later in Kosovo, we are witnessing, especially in the media but also in scholarly work, a revival of primordialist explanations. This neo-primordialism is evident both in discussions of the 'World Order' informed by the simplistic 'clash of civilisations' thesis and in the explanations of the recent conflicts as the result of irreconcilable primordial cultural identities and historical claims. While the academic literature is rich in compelling criticism of primordialist approaches, they are newly popular today as they offer a reassuring 'cannot happen to us' type of discourse and show an elective affinity with the differentialism used by the EU and NATO in the process of integration of countries of the former Second World. On the other hand, alternative mainstream explanations rooted in a modernist perspective are also unsatisfactory for the explanation of this new tide of ethno-territorial conflicts.
   I present a sustained critique of both primordialist and modernist approaches and actually argue that using this well established dichotomy to appraise competing explanations in the field of ethnic and nationalism studies has done much harm to the theoretical advancement of the field. As in most other sub-field of the social sciences, the relevant literature should be classified in term of the type of explanatory variable, the level of analysis (micro/macro) and other common criteria. First, therefore, the paper reframes the review of the literature in such a way as to put the field in the context of major theoretical debates of the social science which so far have only barely touched it. Second, having in mind the goal of carrying on comparative empirical analysis of concrete instances, it moves from the general theories advanced by the most eminent scholars to middle-range models that can be extracted from such theories or that exist independently from them. From this procedure it emerges that most current explanations, be they of a primordialist or modernist leaning, establish a direct non mediated link between ethno-territorial mobilisation and conflicts on the one hand, and broadly defined socioeconomic and/or ethnocultural factors on the other hand. All of these hypotheses have some explanatory power but miss a crucial intermediate level linking socioeconomic and ethnocultural factors to mobilisation and conflicts, namely the established institutional-political context and the short-term political and geo-political dynamic in which such mobilisation takes place and it is opportunistically 'framed' by the relevant actors.
   In light of the above analysis the paper proposes a structured contingency model drawing insights from institutional sociology as applied for instance to ethnicity and nationalism by Brubaker (i.e. 1994), the recent literature on social movement/collective action as it has been made relevant by Statham and Koopmans for the analysis of mobilisation on citizenship and migration (see abstract above), and on the literature on transition to democracy emphasising the ‘path dependent’ and high level of uncertainty characterising extra-ordinary political processes (i.e. O'Donnel and Schmitter 1986). As such model implies a shift from socially and culturally determined causation toward institutional conditioning and political contingencies/ uncertainties, its methodological implications for comparative research are discussed in the concluding section of the paper where I also propose some possible directions for future research projects

Based on recent sociological studies carried out on representative samples in Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, patterns of national identity formation will be explored as a function of ethnic and political membership of the nation. This paper intends to prove the hypothesis that those state boundaries that were established in 1920 between Hungary, Romania and Slovakia were more successful in creating differences among people of the same ethnic origin than they were in promoting national solidarity between citizens who belonged to majority and minority groups within the enlarged and/or newly constructed nation states.

Land reforms are in general considered as crucial instruments in order to implement socioeconomic modernisation of a nation state. Central and Eastern Europe is a region in which agrarian reforms played since the formation of the nation states after the break-down of multicultural empires (Hasburg, Ottoman, Prussian and Russian empires) – a very important role in the structuration of the new societies and economies. But under the label of progress and modernisation a hidden dimension can be discovered. As the cases of Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia are showing, the modernisation effect (for example the destruction of feudal structures or latifundism) of land reforms is covering more or less ‘soft’ forms of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (expropriations followed by expulsions, exchange and forced migration of ethnic groups) which can be seen as the historical antecedents of actual interethnic conflicts.

The paper attempts to assess the importance of different factors – underdevelopment in Eastern Anatolia, lack of group rights, armed conflict between Turkish security forces and the PKK – in causing the recent flow of migration of Turkey's Kurds. The military pressure compels people to leave the rural areas in Eastern Anatolia and move to urban centres and abroad. The illiberal legislation of the Turkish state with regard to individual and group rights can only produce more problems in the near future as ethnic self-identity increasingly becomes an issue in the way urbanised Kurds participate in modern Turkey's economic and political life.

In October of 1981 a new law allowed foreign residents in France to freely establish their own associations. Since then some famous instances of mobilisation such as the walk of December 1983 (so called 'marche des beurs'), the birth of two major associations one year later (SOS Racism and France Plus), as well as the great feast of SOS Racism in June 1985 on Place de la Concorde, have led to the emergence of the 'beur' movement. At least at the height of such mobilisation, the 'beurs' movement has clearly tackled the issues of equitable integration. The author, together with other researchers at CERI, has participated to the first field study on such associative movement in 1987–1989 and to a repeat study conducted in 1996 on 52 historical civic associations. On the basis of such empirical material the paper reconstructs the trajectory of such movement in term of its main discourse and aims, of its leadership and of the relationship to the dominant state policies. Three major phases can be outlined: the first that can be defined 'from immigration to citizenship', the second 'from citizenship to identities' and the third 'from political to social aims'. The paper argues that ever since the 1990s the movement, also as a result of the de-legitimisation of large sectors of the leadership in the eyes of their constituencies, has entered a period of crisis resulting in a switch from politics to social issue, that is a reversal of the initial phase of mobilisation which built upon social grievance to enter the real of political claims. The new trend is that of a form of associative movement inward looking, focused on issues internal to strictly delimited neighbourhood communities such as drugs, school failure and the like. Within this trend it is also evident a new tendencies of the associations to tackle these localistic issues in partnership with policies implemented by local representative of the state.

In the 1990s, issues related to the integration of foreign residents and ethnic minorities have in Belgium, and especially in Brussels, increasingly become intertwined with the dominant political cleavage along linguistic lines (Dutch-speaking–French-speaking). Since 1993, composed of three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and the Region of Brussels-Capital) and three national communities (a Dutch speaking (Flemish), French speaking and German speaking community). Every region and community has its own representative body (parliament) and government and is endowed with specific political competencies. At the same time there is a national parliament and national government in Belgium. The complex institutional arrangements, and the uneven distribution of policy competencies it leads to, create a complex political situation that may be understood in terms of 'multi-levelled governance' (Favell and Martiniello 1998). Actors at different levels of the political system are involved in continual battles over jurisdiction over policy and resources. Immigration, citizenship and integration policy in particular has thus in recent times been an area of policy prone to many contests between Flemish, Walloon or Francophone politicians, and figures at city, community, regional and federal levels. Moreover, given this context, immigrant minorities themselves are faced with the difficult question of to whom they should address their claims. The problems caused by the multi-levelled governance situation can thus be seen to lead to both further problems of exclusion and non-representation, while also (arguably) enabling new coalitions of interest between immigrant representatives and Flemish, Walloon or Francophone political interlocutors. This is particularly the case in the bi-lingual Region of Brussels-Capital – geographically an enclave in the Flemish Region –, where both the Flemish as the Francophone communities have jurisdiction and of which 30 per cent of the inhabitants are non-nationals. Among the nationals in Brussels, it is estimated, that 15 per cent is Dutch speaking and 85 per cent is French speaking. The (political) incorporation of the foreign population in either one of the linguistic communities is often seen as being (possibly) instrumental in tipping the power balance between the two national communities in Brussels in one or the other direction. As a result, the issue of integration policy – and particularly acquisition of citizenship and enfranchisement – has increasingly become intertwined with the political cleavage between the national linguistic groups. In this paper the focus will be on two recent developments related to the intertwining of the issue of integration policy and the cleavage between ethno-territorial communities. On the one hand, it is discussed how and why Flemish and Francophone politicians have had conflicting views on (and different stakes to) integration of foreign residents, in particular related to acquisition of state citizenship and enfranchisement of EU-citizens and third country nationals. On the other hand, the incorporation of (naturalised) ethnic minority candidates by both Flemish as Francophone parties in the June 1999 regional and federal elections will be discussed. Furthermore, I will look into the strategic attempts of the Flemish government in Brussels to incorporate immigrant (mainly Francophone) self-organisations into its policy schemes, thus hoping to strengthen the power of the Flemish community within the Region of Brussels-Capital (a region which is de facto dominated by the Francophones).

The Kahn Commission in 1995 and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance in 1997 proposed that the motives of perpetrators of racially motivated criminal offences – such as physical assaults, verbal threats, and damage to property – should be taken into account in the punishment of crimes. Additional punishment for racial motivation has been applied in some European countries in the shape of discretionary penalty enhancement provisions and through the establishment of specific offences of racially motivated crimes. There is though, a considerable controversy about similar provisions in the United States where the constitutionality of ‘hate-crime’ legislation has been questioned on the grounds that it arguably punishes an offender more seriously than another on the basis of their viewpoints. It has also been argued that the legislation has failed to meet its objectives, and even worse, generated social divisions. There has, however, been little empirical evaluation in either Europe or the United States of the utility of outlawing racial motivation behind crimes. In this context, this paper reports on a pilot research project carried out in the United States in early 1999. The research canvassed views about the perceived value of hate crime legislation from representatives of communities with a stake in the debate about the desirability of legislation.

The Hungarian Minority Ombudsman is a unique institution in the East-Central European region. It is an institution of citizens belonging to national or ethnic minorities through which they can act to control their permanent enemy: the state. The power of the ombudsman is quite extensive: he considers individual cases of violation of minority rights, he is involved in shaping policy, and is moreover indirectly also involved in legislating (he may suggest legislation, amendment of legislation or invalidation of legislation). He educates both the authorities and the majority population. The ombudsman has a broad remit to act when there is an abuse of constitutional rights, and such abuse is taken to include not only illegal but also unreasonable behaviour. His brief is to keep an eye not only on legality but also on equity for members of minorities. His means are very flexible: they include no sanctions but encompass persuasion, mediation and publicity.
   The Minority Ombudsman is thus an institution which mediates in the relations between state and minorities, furthers their integration but impedes their assimilation. He actively participates in shaping an adequate minority protection system, one which is more than a piece of legislation. But he does not do this in the way of an ordinary policy-maker: his judgments are informed by the position of those who are most involved, the ethnic and national minorities. He initiates and sometimes chairs the debates concerning problematic elements of the minority protection system.
   The institution of the Minority Ombudsman is a possible solution for a successful equity-based integration of minorities in the political community. As such it is not only relevant for Hungary but for other East-Central European multicultural societies as well. The model it follows comes from other parts of Europe. Equivalents of the institution are to be found for example in Sweden (the Anti-discrimination Ombudsman), or in a somewhat different form in the UK ( the Commission for Racial Equality ). However these equivalents may mainly be addressing problems affecting migrants and ethnic minority communities. Yet commonalties are many. The existence of the Minority Ombudsman institution in its different forms around Europe serves to illuminate similarities in the problems facing migrants and national and ethnic minorities, and provides for their comparison.

In 1998 nationalities policy in the Russian Federation has witnessed a major innovation with the approval of the law on National Cultural Autonomy (henceforth NCA). As it is well known the classical doctrine of NCA elaborated by the so-called 'Austro-marxists' (?. Bauer and R. Shpringer), strongly criticised and opposed by both Lenin and Stalin, saw it as an alternative to administratively defined territorial autonomy. The introduction of the new law on NCA creates in the Russian Federation, institutionally built as an ethno-federation, an eclectic situation mixing the two principles of territorial and national cultural autonomy.
   In principle the major declared goal of the law on NCA was to remedy to the pitfall of the Soviet inherited policy based on the couple 'ethno-territorial autonomy/ titular nationalities' and provides individual belonging to nationalities non titular of territorial autonomy or residing outside of 'their' autonomy with access to collective cultural rights. The paper argues that, as a result of the lack of clarity in the law and of its inadequacy to reality of multinational Russia, this policy innovation creates more problems that it purported to solve by arousing new ethnically-based discontentment and competition in several ways.
   The law introduces NCA not as a general principle of policy, nor as a theoretical conception, but instead as a social institute that groups of individuals can establish at several levels by unifying various first level associations, without establishing whether all ethno-cultural associations of the given group should be incorporated in the respective NCA and how many NCAs of a given ethnic group can be established within a given administrative territorial unit. This situation is currently causing competition and tensions among the leaders of ethno-cultural associations: personal ambitions has resulted in the creation of various NCA opposing each other. Moreover, the law states that NCA should receive financial support form the Federal budget (in the form of direct financing, preferential credit and exemption from taxation), while it does not set the principles and mechanisms for state financial support to NCA leaving the space for bureaucrats to arbitrarily determine volumes and addressees of financial support . This situation not only creates new opportunities for corruption, but also further stimulate competition and eventually resentment both between and within NCAs.
   A second shortcoming of the law, clearly manifested in the political reaction to it, has been to exacerbate the relationship between the Russian majority and the other nationalities, thus providing new fuel to the self-victimising discourses of radical Russian nationalists. Since the NCA is presented as a way to guarantee all citizens with the right to receiving education in the native language has led Russian nationalists to lament that, by subtracting public educational funds to the benefit of minorities, the law is another example of discrimination against the majority. An unintended results of such context has been the intention made public by several organisations of radical Russian nationalists to establish NCA for Russians. As the law does not specifically rule out the creation of NCA for Russians, it is providing the opportunity for such nationalist marginal groups to legalise their activity and receive financial support from the state, especially in the metropolitan megalopolis of Moscow. In synthesis the institute of NCA as it has been introduced and used so far in Russia it creates more opportunities for inter-ethnic tensions rather than decreasing them. This is not only because of the inconsistencies and unintended results discussed above, but also because The basic interethnic tensions in today's Russia do not lay in the cultural sphere but in the political one, namely in the sphere of ethnic-coloured federal relations and in the ‘asymmetric’ model of Russian Federalism.

Although the first migrants and migration-related organisations appeared much earlier, at the very beginning of the 1990s, the phenomenon of a migrant social movement in Russia has only become widespread during the last five years. This paper classifies existing migrants’ organisations according to three dimensions: 'purpose and functions', 'type of participants', 'hierarchy level' .Migration-related organisations are becoming more and more active in the formation of state migration policy. They initiate public debates over the further development of the migration-related legislative framework. An agreement on cooperation between the federal migration service and the Forum of Migrants’ Organizations was signed last year. The Council of Migrants was established in December 1998 with the purpose of consulting with the chairman of parliament. Russian migrant NGOs work in partnership with international migration-related organisations, such as UNHCR, IOM, Red Cross, and several national NGOs (Norwegian Refugee Council, Danish Refugee Council etc.). Representatives of Russian migrants NGOs take part in the activity of the Steering Group, established by the 1996 CIS Conference on migration-related issues.  

The aim of this paper is to analyse how, at both a practical and a discursive level, anti-immigrant mobilisations, media campaigns, policing and political decision-making have a reciprocal influence in the construction of migrants as potential criminals. Even if dual relations between each couple of these social actors constitute a system of social construction of their own, the strength of the whole process relies heavily upon its consensual nature, i.e. its capacity of imposing a commonsensical framework for the interpretation of migrant presence shared by all the social actors involved. Not surprisingly, in Italy the news media have provided the means for the building of this consensus, acting as a forum for the encounter, accumulation and articulation of the emerging discourses. What seems different from other similar past and present processes in Europe is the centrality of the role of the local opposition to migrant settlements. The local mobilisations and their function appear as a paradigmatic phenomenon in the transformation of citizenship and its legitimisation.

The Federal Republic of Germany denied being an immigration country at least until the elections of autumn 1998, and does so to a certain extent even now, despite the country having received over seven million immigrants in the course of its 50 years of history. In accordance with this nationhood ideal of ethnic and cultural homogeneity it preserved the ius sanguinis-based naturalisation law of 1913 basically untouched until the new coalition of the SPD and the Greens brought a progressive new draft, which however has been deteriorated under the political pressure of a massive street-campaign of the conservative CDU, followed by a regional CDU-Election victory, as a result of which the coalition-majority in the second chamber (Bundesrat) got lost. A new draft of the citizenship-law followed, based on a ‘compromise’ with the liberal opposition-party FDP – in reality adopting its position. This has recently been voted upon by the Bundestag and will also be voted upon by the Bundesrat. The new law is based on a consensus with parts of the opposition, but is not based on a consensus with its target groups, the vast majority of long-term immigrants, mainly of Turkish descent, who should have been more easily naturalised as a result of the reform. Some important reasons for these shortcomings of this partial, third-generation-centred reform are: 1) Inequality between immigrants of European Union origin and other immigrants with respect to the right to have two or more citizenships; 2) An imprecise and inadequately high language competence requirement as a prerequisite of naturalisation for the first-generation migrants (Gastarbeiter); 3) A rather arbitrary age limit of ten years for the immigrant children born prior to the passing of the new law but to whom it shall be made applicable if they apply within one year after the coming into force of the new law 4) The new law is in disagreement with article 14 a of the 1997 convention of the Council of Europe, which proposes to grant a permanent double citizenship to those persons who have acquired two citizenship by birth; this will be the case for third generation immigrant children under the new law. Our remarks will be based to a certain extent on our report for the Bundestag, of which a short version can be found in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 7 May 1999, p. 9.

The paper presents a critical survey of the state of the current research on immigration policies. The first part highlights the social and disciplinary changes that have recently made ‘immigration policy’ a legitimate topic of social inquiry. It is argued that we are currently witnessing a fairly large wave of studies of the topic and that we may detect the first attempts to move from idiosyncratic case-histories to theoretically informed framework. The second part surveys the main conceptual framework currently employed to make sense of such a policy field. The paper argues that most of such frameworks end up taking for granted that it is possible to ‘extend’ to immigration policy the basic tool box employed for other better known policy domains. Moreover, the study of immigration policies has not yet paid adequate attention to their policy-making, ending up often taking at face value the accounts of the actors involved. The third part highlights a number of distinctive features of immigration policy that would deserve the granting of a status of ‘immigration exceptionalism’.

Italy has become a country of immigration since the beginning of the 1970s and is now the fourth country of immigration in European Union and the first in the Mediterranean area. However, up to now, a social project to face this important phenomenon is still lacking. This is largely due to the Italian political culture, which is very different from those of the other European countries of immigration. The Italian idea of nation differs from both the French, the German and the British ones and the models of integration worked out in these countries to face migration do not apply to the Italian case. Moreover, the ‘sense of state’, to use the definition of the Italian founding fathers, is still weak all over the country, though for partially different reasons in the North, the Centre and the South. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church plays an important role in social assistance to immigrants. However, the 'universalistic' ideals inspired by Roman Catholic ideas or leftist internationalist attitudes, which are so deeply rooted in an important part of the Italian ruling class, are increasingly ill-eqipped to face a situation that, in many respects, is even more problematic than that in other European countries of immigration. This concurs to explain some contradictions of both Italian migratory policy and Italian political and ideological debate on migration and migratory policy.