New Immigration Articles from SSRN

Here are two new immigration articles from the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com):

“Loving the Alien? Citizenship, Law, and the Future in South Africa’s Demonic Society” African Affairs, Vol. 109, Issue 435, pp. 213-230, 2010 LOREN B. LANDAU, affiliation not provided to SSRN.  ABSTRACT:   In May 2008, South Africa witnessed two shocking weeks of deadly attacks on foreigners and other suspect outsiders. This article makes sense of the violence with reference to an extended history of South African statecraft that both induced the conflict and hamstrung efforts to address it. In particular, it describes how decades of discursive and institutional efforts to control political and physical space have generated two demons with which the country must now contend. The first is a perceived enemy within: an amorphously delimited group of outsiders that is inherently threatening, often indistinguishable from others, and effectively impossible to exclude spatially. The second demon rests in a society prepared to kill to rid itself of those retarding the country’s post-Apartheid renaissance. For many of those behind the attacks or empathizing with them, controlling the movement of people within the country and across its borders remains essential to security, prosperity, and South Africa’s national self-realization. Political leaders now face a dilemma: extending legal identities and constitutionally promised protections to outsiders and other foreigners risks being seen as betraying the national project by the demonic and visibly violent society they have helped create.

“Multiculturalism Versus Assimilation: Attitudes Towards Immigrants in Western Countries” International Journal of Economic Sciences and Applied Research, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 2009 VANI K. BOROOAH, University of Ulster at Jordanstown – School of Economics and Politics.  ABSTRACT:  JOHN MANGAN, University of Queensland – School of Economics Email: j.mangan@economics.uq.edu.au A long standing area of debate in Western countries is that of the appropriate philosophy for facilitating large scale immigration; should immigrants preserve their traditions and culture while living in the host country (integration/multiculturalism) or should they assimilate themselves into the ways and manners of their hosts? The ways that nations go about resolving this issue goes to the heart of internal policy formulation on immigration but is also influential to the image that the country projects overseas. Countries are often labeled according to the official views of their Governments. For example, France might be classed as essentially assimilationist and Britain as multi-cultural, whereas the Netherlands and Germany might be seen as somewhere between the two, but how did these policy differences come about and do they accurately reflect the views of the majority of residents of the various countries? This paper addresses part of this issue by seeking to identify and analyse the characteristics of those people in Western countries who think that immigrants should assimilate culturally and how they differ from those who think that immigrants should preserve a separate cultural existence? By doing so, it seeks to explain why these inter-country differences in views exist and whether they are caused primarily by attribute effects (the composition of the population) or by coefficient effects (the strength of the views they hold). This study exploits a unique set of data provided by The Human Beliefs and Values Survey to identify and to estimate the strength of those factors which lead people to favour cultural integration over multiculturalism for immigrants. In doing so, it provides Governments with a snapshot of contemporary views on this increasingly important issue and how these views may shift as demographic characteristics alter.

KJ