Debating Migration to Europe: Welfare vs Identity by Raffaele Marchetti

Author:Raffaele Marchetti [Marchetti, Raffaele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351359092
Google: ACw2DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36705024
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

The example of the US

The European debate on migration has also been befuddled by analogies to US history that are inappropriate or mistaken. North America was always an area of immigration in a way that Europe –as I will show –has never been; and no amount of propaganda by proponents of migration will convince European populations otherwise. Over half of the continental US –one and a half million square miles, or almost the whole of Western Europe –was only settled by Europeans between 1840 and 1890, at the height of immigration.

Second, non-Protestant immigrants to the US were assimilated by two cultural-political processes, one generally positive but probably not repli-cable in Europe, the other deeply negative. The first was the creation of an exceptionally strong American civic nationalism based on the ‘American Creed’ of belief in the country’s supreme embodiment of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and America’s mission to spread its values to the rest of the world, (Lieven, 2012, pp. 47–80).

The term ‘American nationalism’ was coined by Herbert Croley and others in the 1990s, as a way of assimilating vast numbers of immigrants through adherence to American civic values and loyalty to the US. As in Europe at the time, though with a different content, this nationalism was rigorously instilled in the population, especially through the school system. This American civic nationalism has been recommended as a future path for European nations and national integration (Goodhart, 2013, p. 333). But (quite apart from the implication of such nationalism in catastrophic US interventions in the Muslim world), it seems doubtful that either individual European countries or the European Union can generate this kind of nationalism today. Even if they could, there is a strong likelihood (apparent in the rhetoric of Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Marine Le Pen, and others in defence of ‘liberal civilisation’ and ‘democracy’) that this kind of civic nationalism would take on a strongly anti-Islamic cast.

Another important aspect of the assimilation of newer waves of white immigrants in the US was the way in which they joined the previously settled white populations in hostility to African Americans and (in certain places) Native Americans, and used arguments of white solidarity and white civilisation as a way of seeking equality for themselves by keeping others down (Lieven, 2012, p. 138; Ignatiev, 1995; Glazer & Moynihan, 1979). It is not difficult to see how in Europe, migrants from elsewhere in Europe, such as Eastern Europeans, or non-European migrants with economic success and embedded hostility to Muslims (like Hindus) may use anti-Muslim sentiment in this way. It should be obvious that while the status of African Americans has improved radically since the days of slavery, four centuries after first being brought to the US, they remain on balance a highly disadvantaged and frequently stigmatised population. The history of free migration to the US has also hardly been trouble-free. Historically, racial minorities were ruthlessly excluded from political power and social advancement, either by formal or informal means.

Trump’s election

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