Citizenship, Migration and the Reassertion of National Identity

Abstract

Faced with increasing and diverse migratory pressures in the post Cold War period, European states have created an increasingly complex system of civic stratifications with differential access to civil, economic and social rights depending on mode of entry, residence and employment. Now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, expansion and contraction of rights have occurred within a managerialist approach which, though recognising the need for immigration, applies an economic and political calculus not only to labour migration but also to forms of migration more closely aligned to normative principles and human rights, such as family formation and reunification and asylum. At the same time, states are demanding affirmation of belonging and loyalty, leading to greater emphasis on obligations in the practice of citizenship. The first part of the paper traces the evolution of a managerialist regime and its consequences for the reconfiguration of spaces of citizenship. The second section examines the development of new contracts of settlement and the management of diversity as the state reasserts its national identity and sovereignty.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• migration
• national identity
• postnationalism
• Europe

Notes

¹ For geographers, the social construction, politics of scale and implications of territorial re-scaling have been intensely debated (Smith, 1992, 1995; Marston, 2000; Brenner, 2001). As Howitt (2003), in a wide-ranging review, has highlighted the discussion has shifted from the notion of scale as fixed divisions to the idea of nested hierarchies to scale as a matter of relation. So too have writers more recently considered consumption and social reproduction in terms of the construction of scale (Marston, 2000)

² Despite the fact that the UN Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families was finally ratified by 20 countries in July 2003 and 27 as of October 2004, not a single Northern country has signed it.

³ In effect there are a series of myths promulgated in different European states. These range from the possibility of controlling and reducing migration to zero growth announced by Charles Pasqua, the then Interior Minister in France in 1993, to being a country of non-immigration long sustained in Germany until the Sussmuth Report in 2000, the continuing myth, despite the evidence, that Europe does not need less skilled labour, especially in Northern European states. The latter position was restated by a representative of the British Home Office at a session Today's labour migration—how should it be managed and in whose interest? at the Metropolis conference in Geneva in September 2004.

⁴ Southern European states recognise labour shortages primarily in less skilled and often informal sectors, such as domestic labour, and for which quotas may be set.

⁵ Rod Liddell, a freelance journalist, referred to this in his programme on 31 March 2005 on Channel 4 (UK). He presented the anti-immigrant position, in which a key argument was that the UK, especially those in the prosperous South East, did not have the space for more migrants, which risked undermining its quality of life. In his opinion all other prosperous countries had far lower population densities!

⁶ Post the July 2005 London bombings commentators have been quick to offer simplistic advice about how the British should emulate the “French model of assimilation, where you hammer away at everyone until they think they are French” according to a former White House aide (Bright & Harris, 2005).

⁷ Muslims form 2.5% of the population in the UK, 3.7% in Germany, France 10%.

⁸ In the Netherlands, 75% of Moroccan and Turkish marriages involve bringing in spouses from abroad. In order to marry a non-EU national, the Dutch national or resident must have an income of at least 120% of the minimum salary for the Netherlands (about €1,100 per month in 2002) and have an employment contract for at least one year. A naturalised Dutch citizen, or non-EU national residing in the Netherlands, must be over 21 years of age to be permitted to bring a would-be spouse into the country.