Ethnicity And Citizenship

This book explores the politics of race, censuses, and citizenship, drawing on the complex history of questions about race in the U.S. and Brazilian censuses. It reconstructs the history of racial categorization in American and Brazilian censuses from each country’s first census in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries up through the 2000 census. It sharply challenges certain presumptions that guide scholarly and popular studies, notably that census bureaus are (or are designed to be) innocent bystanders in the arena of politics, and that racial data are innocuous demographic data. Using previously overlooked historical sources, the book demonstrates that counting by race has always been a fundamentally political process, shaping in important ways the experiences and meanings of citizenship. This counting has also helped to create and to further ideas about race itself. The author argues that far from being mere producers of racial statistics, American and Brazilian censuses have been the ultimate insiders with respect to racial politics. For most of their histories, American and Brazilian censuses were tightly controlled by state officials, social scientists, and politicians. Over the past thirty years in the United States and the past twenty years in Brazil, however, certain groups within civil society have organized and lobbied to alter the methods of racial categorization. This book analyzes both the attempt of America’s multiracial movement to have a multiracial category added to the U.S. census and the attempt by Brazil’s black movement to include racial terminology in census forms. Because of these efforts, census bureau officials in the United States and Brazil today work within political and institutional constraints unknown to their predecessors. Categorization has become as much a "bottom-up” process as a "top-down” one.

Most interpretations of ethnicity concentrate either on particular societies or on specific dimensions of 'world society'. This work takes quite a different approach, arguing that variations within and across societies are vital for understanding contemporary dilemmas of ethnicity. The author aims to develop a new analysis of the relation between the nation on the one hand, and ethnicity and citizenship on the other. Oommen conceives of the nation as a product of a fusion of territory and language. He demonstrates that neither religion nor race determines national identities. As territory is seminal for a nation to emerge and exist, the dissociation between people and their 'homeland' makes them an ethnie. Citizenship is conceptualized both as a status to which nationals and ethnies ought to be entitled and a set of obligations, a role they are expected to play. Analyses of three historical episodes - colonialism and European expansion, Communist internationalism and the nation-state and its project of cultural unity - are examined to provide the empirical content of the argument. This book will be essential reading for second-year undergraduates and above in the areas of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

In contrast to most other countries, both Germany and Israel have descent-based concepts of nationhood and have granted members of their nation (ethnic Germans and Jews) who wish to immigrate automatic access to their respective citizenship privileges. Therefore these two countries lend themselves well to comparative analysis of the integration process of immigrant groups, who are formally part of the collective "self" but increasingly transformed into "others." The book examines the integration of these 'privileged' immigrants in relation to the experiences of other minority groups (e.g. labor migrants, Palestinians). This volume offers rich empirical and theoretical material involving historical developments, demographic changes, sociological problems, anthropological insights, and political implications. Focusing on the three dimensions of citizenship: sovereignty and control, the allocation of social and political rights, and questions of national self-understanding, the essays bring to light the elements that are distinctive for either society but also point to similarities that owe as much to nation-specific characteristics as to evolving patterns of global migration.

Nationalism, ethnicity and citizenship lie at the heart of many of the societal changes that are currently transforming countries across the world. Global migration has undermined old certainties provided by the established framework of nation-states, with inward migration, cultural diversity and transnational affiliations having become established facts of life in many countries. These phenomena raise significant challenges for traditional conceptions of citizenship. This book provides a detailed examination, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, of contemporary issues relating to nationalism, ethnicity and citizenship. The book aims to take stock of current understandings in this area, and to establish whether there are connections between the understandings that are being articulated within different social science disciplines. The contributors, who are all senior international figures in their respective fields, are drawn from a range of disciplines, including Politics, Sociology, Communication/Media, Geography, Psychology and Education. Collectively, they address the following specific questions: • To what extent do multiculturalism and transnationalism undermine nationalism or, on the contrary, provoke its reassertion? • How do the multiple identities and multiple levels of belonging experienced today interact with traditional nationalist ideology? • Within multicultural societies, how far do representations of ‘cultural others’ still play a role in nationalist constructions of ‘the nation’? • How successfully have the welfare systems of nation-states responded to the influx of migrants? • How have national politicians responded to the cultural diversity of their own countries and have they moved beyond the traditional logic of nationalism within their thinking? • Why are extreme right-wing parties gaining increased levels of support? • What social and psychological resources do citizens require in order to function effectively at the political level within multicultural democratic societies? • How can the educational systems of states, which have traditionally been used for nationalist purposes, be harnessed to enhance the competences needed by their citizens for successful living in multicultural societies? • What changes need to be made to educational policies in order to ensure the effective integration of minority citizens? Despite the fact that they have been written from different disciplinary perspectives, the various chapters in this book paint a consistent picture. They offer a view of a world in which nationalism is still very much a dominant ideology which configures the discourse and thinking of citizens and politicians alike about nation-states, ethnic diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship. The crucial role of education is also highlighted, with school systems being uniquely positioned to equip citizens with the psychological resources and intercultural competences that are needed to function effectively within multicultural societies.

Winner of the National Communication Association's 2018 Diamond Anniversary Book Award With the exception of slave narratives, there are few stories of black international migration in U.S. news and popular culture. This book is interested in stratified immigrant experiences, diverse black experiences, and the intersection of black and immigrant identities. Citizenship as it is commonly understood today in the public sphere is a legal issue, yet scholars have done much to move beyond this popular view and situate citizenship in the context of economic, social, and political positioning. The book shows that citizenship in all of its forms is often rhetorically, representationally, and legally negated by blackness and considers the ways that blackness, and representations of blackness, impact one’s ability to travel across national and social borders and become a citizen. This book is a story of citizenship and the ways that race, gender, and class shape national belonging, with Haiti, Cuba, and the United States as the primary sites of examination.

"What is the state of the field of immigration and ethnic history; what have scholars learned about previous immigration waves; and where is the field heading? These are the main questions as historians, linguists, sociologists, and political scientists in this book look at past and contemporary immigration and ethnicity"--Provided by publisher.

Essays discuss the economic and social characteristics of immigrants, settlement patterns, U.S. immigration policy, and naturalization.

This volume, from an Africa perspective, examines the relationship between ethnicity and citizenship within the framework of nation-state. Its objective and scope engage relational aspects of political integration, awaken public conscience, and motivate civic engagement. It provides a platform that could be considered prerequisite for political transformation. Such a framework is indispensable not only for challenging the politics of exclusion and marginalization, but also for reconstructing fractured social relationships. The test of its validity and relevancy is not whether it accounts for particular traditions, but whether it provides a framework through which we can comprehend the dynamics of ethnic identities as an avenue for promoting participatory governance and democratic accountability. An interdisciplinary study of this kind brings forth practical and theoretical contributions to the evolving concepts of ethnicity and citizenship.

The American dream of equal opportunity and social mobility still holds a powerful appeal for the many immigrants who arrive in this country each year. but if immigrant success stories symbolize the fulfillment of the American dream, the persistent inequality suffered by native-born African Americans demonstrates the dream's limits. Although the experience of blacks and immigrants in the United States are not directly comparable, their fates are connected in ways that are seldom recognized. Immigration and Opportunity brings together leading sociologists and demographers to present a systematic account of the many ways in which immigration affects the labor market experiences of native-born African Americans. With the arrival of large numbers of nonwhite immigrants in recent decades, blacks now represent less than 50 percent of the U.S. minority population. Immigration and Opportunity reveals how immigration has transformed relations between minority populations in the United States, creating new forms of labor market competition between native and immigrant minorities. Recent immigrants have concentrated in a handful of port-of-entry cities, breaking up established patterns of residential segregation,and, in some cases, contributing to the migration of native blacks out of these cities. Immigrants have secured many of the occupational niches once dominated by blacks and now pass these jobs on through ethnic hiring networks that exclude natives. At the same time, many native-born blacks find jobs in the public sector, which is closed to those immigrants who lack U.S. citizenship. While recent immigrants have unquestionably brought economic and cultural benefits to U.S. society, this volume makes it clear that the costs of increased immigration falls particularly heavily upon those native-born groups who are already disadvantaged. Even as large-scale immigration transforms the racial and ethnic make-up of U.S. society—forcing us to think about race and ethnicity in new ways—it demands that we pay renewed attention to the entrenched problems of racial disadvantage that still beset native-born African Americans.

This topical book examines the debates around contemporary conflicts between liberal democracies and increasingly vociferous special interest groups within society. It analyses the way a new sense of difference and the growth of multi-culturalism are straining modern notions of citizenship and rights, looking in particular at how ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe have escalated to international tragedies, while in the US and Canada, race, ethnicity and radical feminism are at the heart of a social conflict which challenges national identity and the unity of the state.