Nationalism, Identity and the Governance of Diversity

Old Politics, New Arrivals

F. Barker

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349464418, 9781137339300
• eBook ISBN: 9781137339317
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Examining the evolving responses to immigration, migrant integration and diversity of substate governments in Quebec, Flanders and Brussels, and Scotland, Fiona Barker explores what happens when the 'new' diversity arising from immigration intersects with the 'old' politics of substate nationalism in decentralized, multinational societies.

1

Immigrant Newcomers and the Old Politics of Nationalism

1.1 The challenge of multiple diversities

In contemporary democracies, immigration, migrant integration, and the management of diversity are the objects of robust political and social debate. In European societies, for instance, the numbers of immigrant newcomers, the place of cultural and religious diversity, and, in some countries, even the labour mobility of European Union (EU) citizens have become electorally charged. Formal demands regarding migrants’ linguistic, cultural or values adaptation via ‘civic integration’ tests or courses have proliferated in recent years. Yet, despite some claims of convergence on immigration, integration and citizenship policies (Soysal 1994), states continue to adopt a variety of approaches regarding admissions criteria, integration requirements and the social, civic and political rights extended to both individual migrants and ethnic and religious groups (Koopmans et al. 2012).

In multinational societies like the United Kingdom, Belgium and Canada, the challenge of governing diversity is even more complex because of pre-existing debate and contestation over the claims of substate nations—regions that claim some degree of linguistic, cultural or national recognition or self-determination (Barker 2010; Winter 2011; Zapata-Barrero 2009). In these societies, the ‘new’ diversity arising from immigration meets the ‘old’ politics of substate nationalism, as political leaders in societies like Scotland, Flanders and Quebec confront immigration flows and immigrant integration patterns that could impact, either positively or negatively, on the substate nation’s own identity and interests. For some, the presence of diverse immigrant populations challenges the substate nation’s claims to cultural or linguistic distinctiveness. Moreover, immigrants’ integration patterns could buttress the linguistic, cultural or political majority in the nation-state, to the detriment of the substate nation. For others, migrants might prove to be potential allies in ongoing cultural and political struggle against the central state. This is ever more relevant as migrants and their descendants increasingly possess the full political rights associated with citizenship. Thus, as Chapter 2 outlines further, migrants’ arrival, presence and integration patterns have the potential to be of particular interest to substate national leaders as they continue to negotiate their relationship with the central state.

Not only might questions of immigration and integration be of interest to substate national leaders, but the global trend of decentralization of power means they are increasingly empowered to decide how to respond to migration and diversity. Under conditions of political decentralization, policy making is no longer solely the domain of the central state. Important questions therefore arise: First, how do substate national leaders respond to immigration, migrant integration and diversity? Second, what shapes their responses? Third, what is the relationship between substate nations’ ongoing political and constitutional struggles with the central state, on one hand, and their relationship to immigrants in their midst, on the other? More broadly, what are the implications of political decentralization for how diversity is governed in contemporary democracies?

This book provides answers to these questions. While others have studied aspects of immigration from the perspective of federal systems (Joppke & Seidle 2012), regionalist party strategies (Hepburn 2009b), the confrontation of multinationality and multiculturalism in public discourse (Winter 2011) and the consequences of multinational politics for immigrants’ sense of belonging (Banting & Soroka 2012), my focus is on the policy responses of substate governments in decentralized political systems characterized by multinationality. The comparative study of how political leaders in Quebec, Flanders and Brussels, and Scotland have responded to immigration and diversity sheds light on two phenomena that continue to challenge traditional notions of the nation and citizenship—namely, the ‘old’ politics of substate nationalisms and the ‘new’ diversity of immigration.

In response to the first, descriptive question of how substate national leaders respond to immigration, migrant integration and diversity, I show there is no single typical substate nation response. Examining the substate policy approach to immigration and integration in terms of both the relative openness to migrants’ presence in the substate national community and the extent to which substate governments seek migrants’ cultural, political or linguistic adaptation, I show that substate responses to migration have varied across both time and space. There are differences in substate leaders’ initial engagement with immigration and integration. Until the end of the 1960s, when Quebec’s National Assembly approved the creation of a Ministry of Immigration and officials subsequently began to discuss the place of immigrants in Quebec society, Quebec’s leaders were characterized by a degree of hostility to migrants’ presence in the substate national community. Flanders and Scotland, on the other hand, both exhibited long periods where political attention (either positive or negative) was rarely paid to the immigrant question. Substate leaders did not view migrants as connected in any way to the ongoing substate nationalism and autonomy struggle.

Subsequently, Quebec underwent the greatest change, as hostility gave way to active efforts to promote immigration into the province. The approach to migrant integration has varied more over time. Patterns of linguistic integration have been a constant focus (Helly 1996), but early conceptualization of migrants in terms of their collective identities gave way to a discourse of liberal citizenship (Juteau 2002), with increasing focus on citizenship rights and duties of individual members of Francophone Quebec society. Quebec’s interculturalism policy was further marked by an emphasis on republican values, as Quebec began debating issues of religious accommodation from the mid-2000s (Bouchard & Taylor 2008; Gouvernement du Québec 2013). In contrast to cross-party consensus on basic immigration and integration policy goals, high levels of contestation mark the more recent policy question of governing religious diversity.

Flanders did not develop an explicit migrant policy approach until well after state reforms in 1980 gave Flemish governments jurisdiction over integration policy. Only in the early 1990s, prompted by social unrest, and in parallel with federal efforts, did the Flemish Community begin seriously addressing migrant issues. For a long time, Flemish governments made no particular effort to secure the linguistic or cultural adaptation of ‘ethnocultural minorities’, as the ‘unit’ of integration was defined (Verhoeven et al. 2003). Indeed, even once the Flemish Community introduced mandatory civic integration requirements for third country nationals in the 2000s (Foblets & Hubeau 1997; Michalowski 2004), other strands of integration policy continued to reflect the discourse of multiculturalism and collective identities. In Brussels, Flemish political leaders tried more actively to incentivize immigrant-origin residents to participate in the Dutch-speaking community in the city-region. While Brussels-Flemish leaders had for several decades been fully absorbed in their own struggle for linguistic rights and emancipation in Brussels (Witte & Van Velthoven 1999), from the mid-1990s several policy tools were used to open up the Flemish Community to ethnocultural minorities’ participation. These moves coincided with growth in the number of migrant-origin citizens, and therefore voters, who could now influence electoral outcomes (Jacobs et al. 2003).

Scottish political leaders, like those in Flanders and Brussels, were long indifferent to migration, largely due to the absence of decentralized power and the low levels of migration in Scotland relative to the rest of the United Kingdom. In contrast to Flanders, though, once substate national leaders directed their attention to questions of immigration and diversity, an active and open stance was constructed regarding both immigration and newcomers’ membership in the Scottish nation. While political leaders focused primarily on immigration, they also developed programmes aimed at integration and ‘equalities’, with few expectations regarding particular cultural adaptation to Scottish society. Political leaders sought to distinguish the nascent ‘Scottish approach’ to integration from that of the United Kingdom government and, especially in the lead up to Scotland’s 2014 independence referendum, nationalist political leaders stressed the desire to acquire power over immigration.

1.2 Explaining substate responses to immigration and diversity

Alongside the empirical accounts, which trace policy development over time, I address the second key question: what shapes the variety of substate policy responses to immigration, immigrant integration and diversity? Chapter 2 identifies two explanations that are helpful, but insufficient, in accounting for substate national approaches. One view, drawn from the literature on nationalism, suggests that nationalisms opposing the modern state delineate their nation in thick, ethnic and anti-modern terms (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1992). On this view, we would expect that the more power a substate nation acquires, the more it is likely to use its power to construct an exclusionary policy towards migrants, grounded in an ethnic definition of membership. An alternative view, with more empirical support, is that the more institutional and policy power a substate nation has, the more it will adopt an open, multicultural position toward immigration and migrants (Kymlicka 2001b). This view is premised on an assumption that increased power builds substate political leaders’ confidence about their ability to control the future of the substate nation. Consequently, they are more likely to open membership of the nation to newcomers.

The book questions these two accounts. Theoretically, there is no reason why nationalisms against the state would necessarily be more closed and particularistic than state-led majority nationalisms (Lecours & Nootens 2011). Empirically, there is no systematic relationship, in either an exclusionary or inclusionary direction, between the degree of substate policy control over migration and their approach to immigration and diversity. In Scotland, weak power over immigration-related issues co-exists with an inclusionary stance towards membership in the nation, while in Flanders a more restrictive approach has long existed alongside extensive decentralization of power over integration. Across substate nations, movement back and forth between group-based multicultural approaches and more individualized approaches to integration has occurred over time even as substate governments consistently acquired more power in the policy field. Nonetheless, while there is no straightforward relationship between increased power and openness to migrants, I do not jettison the possibility that increased power matters.

Some argue that, just as (de)centralization patterns in federal systems reflect the linguistic underpinnings of a society (Erk & Koning 2010), so linguistic difference in the multinational society is determinative for substate responses to migration. On this view, the cultural marker of language is a decisive feature of substate autonomy projects, meaning substate leaders will invariably make their policy choices based on the potential impact of migration on the substate national language. In contrast, on this view, absent a language dimension, we would expect to observe a less negative response to migration or perhaps less attention being paid to migration overall. I examine cases both with (Flanders and Brussels, Quebec) and without (Scotland) a linguistic cleavage in the multinational society.¹ As Chapters 3 to 5 elucidate, in the three cases the presence of a linguistic cleavage in the multinational society is not determinative of particular substate policy approaches to immigration and migrant integration. In cases with a linguistic dimension we see both inclusionary and exclusionary approaches to membership in the substate nation, as well as a mixture of policies towards immigration flows and migrants’ integration.

Of course, language is by no means unimportant. I argue that a linguistic cleavage in multinational societies is relevant for policy to the extent that it constitutes a central goal of substate autonomy projects. In other words, in some places and at some times, linguistic distinctiveness may exist without being the central focus of either the substate autonomy project or the substate—central state relationship. Moreover, as the cases of Brussels, Scotland and, at times, Quebec show, migrant-origin residents’ level of support for the substate political claims vis-à-vis the central state may be of equal, if not greater, concern as patterns of linguistic or cultural integration.

Which other factors shape substate policy approaches to migration and integration? In addition to considering factors associated with explanations of nation states’ immigration and integration policies, Chapter 2 identifies other factors specific to the institutional context and to the experience of substate nations that explain substate policy responses to immigration, integration and diversity.

First, the decision actively to address immigration and integration, and to link it to the politics of multinationalism, is shaped by substate leaders’ perception of how and how much immigration impacts on core substate national goals vis-à-vis the central state, be they linguistic, cultural, political or economic. The more that substate leaders view immigration and integration patterns as impacting—positively or negatively—on the primary goals of the autonomy project, the more they see a reason actively to try to shape migration and integration outcomes. In this sense, as already foreshadowed, it is not the dimension of language (or culture or ethnicity or economics) that matters per se, but rather how and how much immigration and integration patterns are perceived to affect the substate national goals on any of these dimensions. In Scotland, for instance, economic goals have been central to the contemporary nation-building project, with the result that Scottish governments approached issues surrounding immigration and migrants’ integration largely in light of the potential impact of immigration on the economic dimension of the autonomy project.

Substate national goals interact with the institutional and power context. Whereas the bilingual context and limited policy powers of the Flemish Community in Brussels meant it consistently had cause to encourage migrants’ participation in the Dutch-speaking community, in Flanders state reforms from the 1960s to 1980s that fixed the region’s linguistic borders essentially insulated the Flemish Community from any impact of immigrants’ linguistic integration patterns (Witte & Van Velthoven 1999). Thus, while language remained an issue of interest alongside broader political and economic autonomy goals, the institutional context meant language was not a critical dimension in relation to immigrants’ presence and integration patterns.

Second, the empirical chapters show how the institutional context of the multilevel and multinational state impact on substate policy approaches over time. Substate policy is not made solely with reference to the goals or character of the substate nation itself, but is also made in relation—and, indeed, partly in response—to central state policy, reflecting the dynamics of competitive nation-building that scholars have identified in multinational, multilevel political systems (McEwen 2006; McRoberts 1995; Zapata-Barrero 2012). In Scotland and Quebec, the substate response to immigration cannot be understood without reference to central state immigration and integration policies over time. In Quebec, for instance, the distinctive substate integration policy must be seen in light of the central state nation-building project and the rise of federal multiculturalism (Juteau et al. 1998; Winter 2008). The precise contours of Quebec’s interculturalism policy were in turn shaped by substate leaders’ understanding of the content and boundaries of the nation and democratic community (Gagnon & Iacovino 2005). Similarly, in Scotland, the explicitly inclusionary definition of national membership and activist approach to encouraging immigration must be viewed in the context of Scottish political leaders’ responses to a restrictionist turn in United Kingdom immigration, citizenship and national identity policies consistent with what Joppke (2010) described as attempts to ‘re-nationalise citizenship’.

Related to both the perception of how immigration affects core autonomy goals, on one hand, and the institutional context, on the other, are the evolving national identity and goals of substate leaders. The more that substate leaders seek—and see the need—to legitimize the substate nation and its autonomy project in the eyes of domestic or external audiences, the more they are likely explicitly to delineate the boundaries of national membership in civic and inclusionary terms. Just as a global normative context arguably influences expectations about how democratic nation-states behave (Soysal 1994; Triadafilopoulos 2012), so substate leaders asserting themselves as state-like actors are keenly aware of external normative expectations. Even as many nation states have adopted more restrictive policies vis-à-vis immigrants’ entry and integration, the onus on substate nations to prove their credentials as democratic and non-ethnically rooted can place added pressure on substate leaders to adopt an inclusionary policy stance towards immigration. This dynamic is observed in Brussels and Scotland, where substate leaders were concerned about external perceptions of the substate national autonomy project and its bases of membership. In contrast, given the secure constitutional status of the Flemish Community and the distinctive dynamic of Belgian federalism, Flemish political leaders were much less engaged in a similar outward-oriented process of legitimization. In Quebec, attentiveness to external norms has varied over time.

In addition to my primary focus on the relationship between substate and central state levels in the multinational society, I therefore acknowledge the context that supranational institutions and norms provide for substate nations, just as they do for nation-states. In Europe, substate nationalist politics cannot be seen in isolation from how European integration has impacted on understandings of the divisibility of state sovereignty and has offered additional arenas for substate political action (Keating 2001b; Tierney 2005). Similarly, the passage of NAFTA and broader trends in economic globalization altered the stakes and political opportunities for Quebec (Keating 1997). Overall, I acknowledge and take into account the complex range of factors that shape substate policy, rather than seeking to construct a single, determinative explanatory account of substate policy making across time and space.

The empirical chapters also shed light on the broader questions posed about the relationship between substate nationalism (the politics of multinationality), on one hand, and policy responses to immigration and diversity (the politics of immigration), on the other—namely...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• 1 Immigrant Newcomers and the Old Politics of Nationalism
• 2 Nationalism, Decentralization and the Politics of Migration
• 3 Taming the Trojan Horse: Quebec and the Politics of Demography
• 4 Managing Multiple Diversities: Belgian Federalism and the Flemish Politics of Integration
• 5 Civic and Economic Nationalism: The Scottish Turn to Immigration
• 6 Challenges and Opportunities of Governing Diversity in the Multinational Society
• Notes
• References
• Index