Middle class nation building through immigration?

ABSTRACT

This special issue examines the increase in scale and intensity of merit-based (im)migration policies as a means to revive aging populations and boost national economies in countries around the world. It proposes the idea of ‘middle class nation building through immigration’ to characterize this phenomenon, to relate it to previous versions of nation building and (im)migration policies, and to highlight the puzzle of middle class (im)migration at times of increasing socio-political polarization in receiving societies. In this foundational introduction, I define the three concepts at stake, situate them within their respective bodies of literature, and address the following three questions: How to characterize the type of nation building at stake in today’s democracies? Who gets to belong to the new educated middle class? Can we still speak of immigration or do we, instead, observe an end of settlement policies? This allows me to sketch-out the contours of ‘middle class nation building through immigration’ as an ideal-type: a heuristic theoretical construct (not to be found empirically in its pure form) that kindles our imagination, allows us to examine empirical cases, and invites debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• nation building
• middle class
• multiculturalism
• integration

1. Introduction

Governments across the world are contemplating ways to reboot their economies hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the avenues identified to ease socioeconomic divisions within national societies is skilled immigration. ‘Chosen’ – as opposed to ‘endured’ – immigration, to paraphrase former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was already high on the political agenda before the pandemic (Shachar 2016; Triadafilopoulos 2013). In 2015, over 44% of UN member states intended to increase the number of highly skilled migrants (Czaika and Parsons 2017). Most of these countries have also rendered their immigration policies less restrictive in terms of scale, ethnicity, and region of origin (de Haas, Natter, and Vezzoli 2018). To put it with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: being able to get top talent from big pools of well-educated, ambitious, forward-thinking, and diverse people is 'a hell of a competitive advantage’ for a country’s economy (Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada 2018).

This new version of nation building through immigration, sports novel ways of combining cultural and economic elements, as well as ethnocultural diversity and meritocracy. It also contains a demographic dimension. Selecting highly educated and ‘skilled’ individuals (with or without diverse backgrounds) for immigration is supposed to overcome skill shortages, create jobs, increase tax revenues, sustain public health care, rejuvenate aging societies, and replenish the shrinking native-born ‘new’ or ‘educated middle class’ (Reckwitz 2017), all the while these individuals’ urban, middle class background promises easy sociocultural integration. Needless to say that the definition of 'skill' is not objective and highly contested (Liu-Farrer, Yeoh, and Baas 2021). Furthermore, governments come to realize that merely attracting ‘the best and the brightest’ is not sufficient, skilled immigrants also need to be retained (Schiele 2021).

While temporary migration schemes have also substantially increased (Boucher and Gest 2018), many countries allow skilled migrants some sort of two-step immigration leading from work permits to permanent resident status and citizenship. The same rarely applies to low-skilled migrants (Goldring and Landolt 2022). To put it with Joppke (2021, x, Chap. 2), ‘courting the top and fending-off the bottom’ has become widespread in Old and New World/emigration and immigration countries alike (cf. Dauvergne 2016).

Ironically, while the ‘global race for talent’ takes place in the Global North, the traditional native-born middle class is severely strained (Bloemraad et al. 2019; Piketty 2013; Salvatori and Manfredi 2019). There has been a rise in social inequality, a retrenchment of the welfare state, increasing social division, and a transition of populist, anti-democratic politics from the fringes to the centre (Albertini, Ballarino, and De Luca 2020; Bonikowski 2017; De Coninck 2020; Savage 2021). In this context, migration has become a deeply polarized and polarizing subject that exposes new fault lines between different segments of the population and within the middle class itself (Reckwitz 2017).

This special issue reviews, builds on, and contributes to a growing – but so far underdeveloped – body of scholarship researching the new logics and practices of selectively opening/closing national borders to skilled, ethnically diverse middle class (im)migrants against the backdrop of increasing socio-political polarization in receiving societies. To do so, it introduces the concept of ‘middle class nation building through immigration.’ Defined as a middle class project, nation building is neither purely economic, civic, or ethnic, but all the above with a strong emphasis on individual merit, self-cultivation, and Bildung (culture/education). Nation building through immigration is what the so-called settler societies have earned their name for: actively recruiting population and labour from outside the national territory, while notoriously downplaying the fact that the countries to settle in were not empty lands. The occurrence, specific nature, and amount of state engineering of building nations by means of immigration finds its expression in changing (im)migration and citizenship policies.

The title of this special issue deliberately ends with a question mark. Rather than working with a one-size-fits-all definition, the contributors to this special issue were asked to engage creatively with this concept to assess its usefulness and limitations from a wide range of perspectives (Alm and Robey 2023). As a consequence, the papers in this special issue propose novel macro-sociological theoretical contributions (Winter further below, Joppke 2024) and ‘test’ the proposed ideal-type’s validity by drawing on a wide variety of empirical data and methodological approaches. Investigations include skilled immigrants, refugees, and temporary foreign workers (Abu-Laban 2024; Cook-Martín 2024), receiving society positions (through surveys, policy analysis, discourse analysis; Bilodeau and Gagnon 2024; Peker and Winter 2024; Schmidtke 2024), as well as newcomer positions (through longitudinal and cross-sectional survey data, and ethnographic research; Diehl and Trittler 2024; Lizotte 2024; Nowicka 2024). The empirical cases allow for critical questioning of the theoretical concept, of the normative vision behind it, and of the political operationalization of middle class nation building through immigration.

Bringing together four bodies of literature that seldom cross-fertilize, namely those pertaining to nations and nationalism, skilled migration policies, political polarization, and the (changing) middle classes, the papers in this special issue complement exclusion-based approaches in the interdisciplinary field of migration and ethnic studies (Ellermann 2020a). Specifically, they examine whether middle class immigration creates new status conflicts in receiving societies (Bilodeau and Gagnon 2024; Lizotte 2024). They reveal how education and middle classness interfere with immigrants’ ability and willingness to ‘integrate’ (Diehl and Trittler 2024; Nowicka 2024). They investigate how right-of-centre parties react to middle class migration (Peker and Winter 2024; Schmidtke 2024). They question the idea of nation building in the face of neoliberal migration schemes (Abu-Laban 2024; Cook-Martín 2024; Joppke 2024).

The remainder of this conceptual paper introduces and defines the idea of ‘middle class nation building through immigration’ and situates it within recent theoretical developments and empirical findings. Adequately summarizing the rich and voluminous literature related to each of the concepts at stake would take much more space than what I have at my disposal here. My aim is therefore more modest. Drawing on the literatures related to each concept, I will highlight the most important issues and questions that pertain to the idea of ‘middle class nation building through immigration’ while also introducing the individual papers compiled in this volume. Specifically, I will address the following three questions: How to characterize the type of nation building at stake in today’s democracies? Who gets to belong to the new educated middle class? Can we still speak of immigration or do we, instead, observe the ‘end of settlement’ (Dauvergne 2016) and the return of guestworker schemes?

2. What type of nation building in today’s democracies?

Immigration and citizenship policies have long been tools for social closure and reflections of nation building. Nation building refers to an intergenerational society de longue durée (Schnapper 1998) that is imagined as a community (Anderson 1991), aspires self-governance (its own state; M. Weber 1978), and comprises patterned social relationships (of communalization and sociation; M. Weber 1978) that are constantly ‘in the making.’ Social closure implies the conditions for entry and membership that purportedly serve the national interest whether with respect to shaping the national population or fostering economic growth. As such, immigration and citizenship policies represent and reproduce deep-seated ideas and values of who ‘we’ are and want to be. They are always about relative closure/permeability and create both symbolic and social boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002).

How scholars have categorized state approaches to immigration and citizenship has varied over the years. For a long time, a stark distinction was drawn between European ‘Old World’ nation-states allegedly opposed to immigration and the ‘New World’ settler societies of North America and Australasia thriving on immigration (Freeman 1995). In 1992, Brubaker’s (1992) seminal study of citizenship in Germany and France reinstated the idea – first developed by Meinecke (1922), Kohn (1944), but also Dumont (1983) – of a dichotomy between an ethnic and a civic type of nation building. It presupposes that so-called ethnic nations prioritize a narrow ethnocultural or even blood-based (jus sanguinis) understanding of membership. They are therefore said to be hostile towards ethnic diversity and closed towards immigrants from different cultural, linguistic, and/or religious backgrounds. Alleged civic nations, by contrast, locate the acquisition of membership the expression of political will; they are ‘a daily plebiscite [un plebiscite de tous les jours]’ (Renan 1992). They are also territorial, allowing for citizenship acquisition by birth on the national territory (jus soli; law of soil), but insist on the need for assimilation and the suppression of group identities.

With jus soli – the acquisition of citizenship by birth on the national territory – as the defining criteria for classifying the relationship between nation building and immigrant integration, the dichotomy Old Word/New World lost some of its explanatory value as, for example, the ‘civic nations’ of France and the United States were found to share an assimilationist approach towards immigrants that was said to be rejected by Germany and other alleged ethnic nations regardless of where they were located (other examples of ‘ethnic nations’ included Japan and the French Canadian province of Quebec, Ignatieff 1994; Sharpe 2010).

From there, it took scholars not long to recognize that an assimilationist approach to immigrant integration was not universally shared across settler societies either. Canada, for example, adopted the policy of multiculturalism in 1971, followed by Australia two years later. Originally founded upon concerns for social justice and linked to state-interventionist approaches to social policy, multiculturalism operates at various levels. It allocates symbolic (and limited monetary) resources to immigrants and members of ethnic minorities to redress various forms of discrimination and to enable equitable participation (Breton 1984). It promotes public support for ethnic minorities’ identities and practices, as well as the valorization of cultural diversity more generally (Kymlicka 2007, 2013). In the Canadian context, multiculturalism is also flanked by the promotion of integration, defined as a mutual adaptation between immigrants and the majority population (Berry 2013). As such, multiculturalism serves as a modest remedy to past and present forms of symbolic social closure at the national level (Winter 2007).

To account for a version of nation building that conceives of immigrants as members of ‘ethnic communities’ who may remain somewhat distinguishable from the majority population with regards to language, culture, social behaviour, and associations possibly over generations, a third type was added to the ethnic/civic distinction, namely that of the multicultural or ‘pluralistic-civic’ nation (Castles 1995). This further undermined the explanatory value of an Old Word/New World divide with respect to immigrant integration, as scholars also pointed to Sweden, the Netherlands, and Great Britain as multicultural countries (Harzig 2004; Meer and Modood 2009).¹

While these categorizations of nation-state responses to immigration and ethnic diversity allow scholars to work with clearly defined concepts, advance empirically comparative research, and make sense of different policy approaches, the use of ‘national models’ in migration research is also criticized for being reductionist, normatively informed, and static (Duyvendak and Scholten 2011; Finotelli and Michalowski 2012). These critiques remind us that Weberian-style ideal-types are theoretical abstractions, ‘one-sided, accentuated viewpoints [formed] into an internally consistent mental image [Gedankenbild]’ (M. Weber 2012, 123) that are inspired by empirical examples but cannot be found be found in real life because of their logical exaggeration. Ideal-types should not be imposed on empirical research, nor should they be used normatively. Rather, they are a heuristic means, a tool that allows social scientists ‘to take a first step in the analysis of a topic that is little known or explored’ (Swedberg 2017, 4). Put differently, ideal-types are ‘emergency safe havens until one has learned to find one’s bearings while navigating the immense sea of empirical facts’ (M. Weber 2012, 133).

It is in this sense that this special issue proposes the idea of middle class nation building through immigration: to capture the contours of a new phenomenon, to allude to the many questions it raises, to introduce a concept that empirical reality can be ‘measured’ against, and to stimulate dissent and debate. Hence the question mark at the end of the title.

Indeed, all three ideal-types of nation building (civic, ethnic, and multicultural) seem to be in need of revision, not necessarily because the concepts are flawed but because their value for increasing our knowledge about the social world has passed. To paraphrase Weber again, as the light shed by the great cultural problems moves on, science too must find a new standpoint and change its analytical apparatus (M. Weber 2012, 138). Even if differences at the ideological level – how the nation is imagined – can still be traced empirically, scholars note an increasing convergence across countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia of how immigration and citizenship are defined at the policy level and handled in practice (Joppke 2005, 2007). The presupposition of path dependency – the assumption that deeply seated styles of national self-understanding continue to inform today’s politics of immigration and citizenship – has been proven wrong by recent policy developments. Germany introduced citizenship acquisition based on jus soli in 2000 and has just facilitated dual citizenship (SVR 2023; Winter, Patzelt, and Diehl 2015). In 1997, Glazer (1997) proclaimed that ‘we are all multiculturalist now’, but who would, today, still evoke the Netherlands as a multicultural immigration country? (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012). To put it with Mouritsen (2013, 89), in the first decade of the twenty-first century, we observed the ‘dual discrediting of multiculturalism and overt ethno-nationalism.’ Many of today’s democracies now conceive their national identity in terms of broad civic-liberal values. They officially abandoned discrimination based on ethnic, racial, religious or origin-based criteria (Joppke 2005, 2007), and started to admit immigrants based on individual ‘merit’ (Shachar 2016).

The idea of meritocracy implies that those who work hard, play by the rules, and – as entrepreneurs of the self – turn their talents into useful human capital ‘deserve’ to rise and thrive. Their success seems morally justified because they achieved it neither by means of an ascribed (ethnic) privilege, nor by being born with an extraordinary talent, but by having put effort into nourishing their skills and therefore ‘earned’ their place at the table. As Ellermann (2020a, 2463) puts it, ‘the rise of skill-based immigrant selection came to be hailed as the epitome of non-discrimination.’ This, however, did not eliminate hidden group-level discriminations which do ‘[not] simply constitute unintended consequences of neutral, individual-level traits interacting with structural inequality’ (Ellermann 2020a, 2467). Scholars detail illiberal means (used particularly against Muslims), exclusionary practices, and assimilationist goals of allegedly ‘civic’ integration policies (Ellermann 2020a; Goodman 2014; Joppke 2017a; Mouritsen, Kriegbaum Jensen, and Larin 2019; Pelabay et al. 2020; Triadafilopoulos 2011).

In this special issue, contributors approach the topic from a different angle. While we take note of the embedded discriminations of purportedly ‘civic’ or race-blind immigration and citizenship policies, our focus addresses how the expansion in scale and intensity of skill-based immigration policies shapes life in common (vivre ensemble) within the national society.

Shachar identifies ‘the highly skilled as the new breed of ‘desired’ migrants’ and as ‘those who can shore up the human capital reserve of the nation’ (Shachar 2016, 178, 179). She reminds us that ‘selecting-by-merit […] originated in Canada and has since spread to the four corners of the world’ (Shachar 2016, 181). In Canada and Australia, this approach has gone hand in hand with multicultural integration policies that are considered successful strategies for ‘attracting talent’, for increasing innovation, creativity, and growth (Ng and Metz 2015), and for assuring social cohesion amidst ethnic heterogeneity. Reitz (2013), for example, has long insisted that the success of Canada’s multicultural nation building is deeply conditioned by the country’s economic immigration policy, which selects prospective immigrants based on their (assumed) ability to integrate into the labour market and in the broader society. Elrick (2022) shows how, in the 1950s and 1960s, Canadian immigration bureaucrats began admitting migrants from ‘non-preferred national origins’ based on middle class attributes and criteria like higher educational credentials, economic capital, self-actualization, and ambition – factors they saw as critical to creating an acceptable, functioning multicultural society. She coins the term ‘middle class multiculturalism’, which suggests that high levels of education, relative affluence, and ambition facilitate social cohesion in ethnically diverse (or factually multicultural) societies.

Bilodeau and Gagnon (2024) test this hypothesis. Conducting a survey among Quebec’s (French-speaking, white, native born) majority population, they examine to what extent origin-based preferences shared by majority group members can be attenuated by immigrant selection based on social class. They find that middle class characteristics (professional skills, insinuated work ethic) raise the appreciation of immigrants who are perceived as ethnically and religiously different, but that this does not fully outdo a preference for ethnic sameness. Interestingly, the authors uncover that perceived economic integration into the host society fosters the endorsement of immigration regardless of national origin or social class considerations, suggesting that cultural anxieties and xenophobia among members of the dominant society may indeed be appeased by economic prosperity. These results resonate with Lizotte’s ( 2024) research on ethnic prejudice and its interaction with other sources of division, such as class (as reflected in income and education) and immigration status (native-born versus newly established). While some underprivileged native-born Canadians demonstrate greater ethnic prejudice than their immigrant counterparts, being excluded from middle class status does not at large lead to greater ethnic prejudice. Conversely, belonging to the middle class is not a safeguard against prejudice, since a similar percentage of Canadians who hold ethnic prejudice are observed in all income strata. Overall, Lizotte finds that the many class- and identity-based arguments regarding immigration and status anxiety found in the international literature have limited applicability to the Canadian case.

But is multiculturalism with its concern for social justice still the right term for this type of nation building? In 1967, selecting-by-merit became formalized in Canada’s points system, the world’s first skill-based immigration policy which assesses candidates for immigration based on their age, education, professional credentials, language proficiency, job experience, and (increasingly) arranged employment. In the mid-1990s, the Canadian state increased the portion of immigrants selected through the points system to 60% (leaving 25% of immigrant intake to family reunification and 15% to refugees, both non-economic immigration streams). Immigrants’ skills, abilities, and ethnic origins became touted as competitive advantages for nation building and the economy (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002). At the same time, multiculturalism’s group-based and structural pluralist tendencies were downplayed in favour of human rights-based interpretations (Kymlicka 1995). Scholars observed a shift from groups to individuals as the unit of multicultural accommodation (Winter 2011, 2014b). To borrow from Taylor (1993), relatively shallow individual-based ‘first-level diversity’ became the characterizing dimension of Canadian multiculturalism.² Twenty years later, Joppke (2017b) attests to the spread of a liberal ‘multiculturalism of the individual’, but one wonders whether this edition of multiculturalism does not also contain a neoliberal twist (Winter 2021). Canada, at least, implemented approaches to immigration, integration, and naturalization that are concentrated on ‘picking winners.’ Economic criteria and market values are increasingly applied to immigrants who arrive in Canada through non-economic streams like the family class. Certain family members (e.g. parents and grandparents) are assumed to be economically unproductive and thus denied access to family reunification (Ellermann 2020b). Human capital factors, such as creativeness and self-sufficiency have become critical for successful naturalization. Citizenship is granted as an earned privilege to those who demonstrate mastery of the skills and mindset of highly educated individuals, while some of their community and family members (often spouses) are left behind (Winter 2021). Put differently, the substance of multiculturalism as a policy and ethos of societal integration has been reduced to the celebration of ‘diversity’³, a mode of incorporation that is not mending but at most patching over inequalities (Winter and Carlaw 2024).

While Canada’s approach to immigration and ethnic diversity is often interpreted as an outlier, it may better be viewed as a forerunner. Researchers demonstrate the proliferation of skilled immigration from various origins as a global policy preference (Boucher and Cerna 2014; Triadafilopoulos 2013). Even just concentrating on the liberal democracies covered by the contributions in this special issue⁴, there is a nominal increase in economic immigration schemes relative to family reunification and humanitarian considerations (Boucher 2016; Boucher and Gest 2018). Market imperatives have come to dominate the logics of immigration – whether this concerns labour migration, family reunification or refugees (see contributions to the volume edited by Bonjour and Chauvin 2018; Grace, Nawyn, and Okwako 2018) – as well as integration and citizenship. Newcomers are increasingly judged according to their rank in the human capital hierarchy (Bassel, Monforte, and Khan 2020; Fargues 2020; van Houdt and Schinkel 2013). In short, scholars observe a restructuring of how those in charge of designing and implementing policies are imagining life in common within their respective societies. According to Joppke (2021, 67; borrowing from Shachar 2016), the move from ‘selecting by origin’ to ‘selecting by merit’ likely followed a liberal logic at first, ‘but in today’s selective opening towards high-skilled immigration a neoliberal logic has taken over’. Joppke (2024) is adamant that the phenomenon at hand is best be called ‘neoliberal nationalism’ and not ‘middle class nation building’. He reminds us that ‘immigration policy is notionally tied to the national ideal; it is structurally nationalist [and boundary-sustaining], much as states qua states are.’ He cautions that it is states rather than political communities that determine immigration policies mostly under the influence of interest groups which may or may not correspond to the preferences of the national majority group. In recent years, Joppke argues, society, state and immigration policy came to be radically remodelled along neoliberal lines, by this he means that ‘the logic of one sector, that of the profit-seeking market economy’ has come to permeate all other sectors. Neoliberalism erodes the idea of the welfare state as a community of shared solidarity, and turns individuals into responsibilized, self-sufficient entities who are detached from society and unmarked by ethnicity as ‘long as they are productive and not a cost-factor.’ Importantly, for Joppke, neoliberal nationalism refashions the political community from a community of fate to one that is purely contractual (and thereby different from the principles of liberalism).

I will address Joppke’s reservations against the title of this special issue further below, suggesting that we may agree on more than we disagree. After all, the ‘elective affinities’ between the middle class and neoliberalism have been sufficiently demonstrated (Mau 2015), and Joppke agrees that immigration policies are first and foremost about (selective) closure. This is forcefully demonstrated by Hartmann ( 2020) who reveals the extent to which large segments of middle class professionals benefit from the nation-state’s existence because it shields even the most cosmopolitan-minded among them from external competition. Here, I insist on the terminology of nation building and explain why it might be fruitful to qualify the latter as an ideal-typical ‘middle class’ project.

Scholars of immigration policy have long analysed the latter as an instrument of nation building. In true Weberian fashion, they have identified analytically different considerations for entry and admission. Zolberg (1999, 2006), for example, differentiates between the state’s opposing economic and (national) identity considerations for (not) promoting immigration, permanent residence, and naturalization. According to Hollifield (2004, 885, 887), states are trapped in a ‘liberal paradox’ where ‘economic forces push them towards greater openness, while security concerns and powerful political forces push them towards closure.’ This is because immigration can change the ethnic composition of societies and transform the demos in a way that would violate the social contract. These logically different tendencies (of, yet again, ideal-typical kind) are combined in the concept of status groups (Stände).

Modelled upon medieval estates, status groups are defined by the attribution of ‘a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honour’ (M. Weber 1978, 932), which is monopolized collectively. Status groups are thus communities of prestige, rank, and lifestyle (habitus) whose social standing is often – though not necessarily – based upon the group’s professional occupation and material situation (ibid., 934). In return, the group’s sociocultural prestige (or lack thereof) allows its members the appropriation of economic advantages (M. Weber 1978, 933). Weberian-style status group-formation – or nation building for that matter – contains thus both cultural and economic elements, and these are creatively interwoven to the extent – as Joppke also claims for neoliberalism – that rational, economic considerations become empirically indistinguishable from the cultural, emotional, and/or moral dimensions of the collectivity’s being and vice-versa (Elrick and Winter 2018; Winter 2004, chap. 2; 2021). Nation-states are such status groups, as are ethnic groups, religious groups, and ‘races’. ‘They are all variations of a single theme: grouping people by an affinity that mythically predates the current economic and political scene and which is a claim to solidarity overriding those defined in class or ideological terms’ (Wallerstein 1991, 193). They are also, we should add, competing against each other within inter- and intranational power relations (Winter 2007). Thereby, nation-states provide their members with ‘national capital’, i.e. the varying worth (symbolic economic capital) that is attributed to countries around the globe (Elrick and Winter 2018; Owen 2020).

The title of this special issue captures the idea that nation building has historically been an elite project which fostered the socio-economic and socio-cultural ascendance of middle class citizens (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991). Supported by different fractions of the bourgeoisie, historically wooing the ‘masses’ while sideling the aristocracy, nation building is imagined as the creation and maintenance of a ‘horizontal comradeship’ (Anderson 1991, 7). As such, it involves social closure and boundary drawing not only towards the outside but also the promise of equal respect and the downplaying of class differences within. Defined as a middle class project, nation building entertains a strong emphasis on culture/education (Bildung), self-cultivation, and individual merit (Fehér and Heller 1994). These issues will be discussed next.

3. Who gets to belong … to the (new) middle class?

There is no standard definition of what constitutes belonging to the middle class (Ehrenreich 1989; Seibring 2014; Stearns 1979). Historically, those ‘in the middle’ were not as rich nor ‘blue-blooded’ as the aristocracy on the one hand, and on the other, not as poor as peasants and workers who were also identified as lower ‘races’ (McAll 1992). Interestingly, according to this primordial or blood-based definition, those of middle class status are also implicitly ‘raceless.’ According to an economic logic, belonging to the middle class is about income levels and a comfortable standard of living (Kharas 2010). The middle class is also distinguished from both the upper and lower classes in terms of lifestyle, culture, morals, and a specific sense of dignity (M. Weber 1978, 932; further developped by Bourdieu 1979; Lamont 1992).

Much has been written about the rise and fall of the (old) middle class in liberal democracies, but scholars still do not seem to know where exactly our societies are heading. The thirty years after the Second World War – the so-called trente glorieuses (Fourastié 1979) – are known as an era of high economic productivity, increasing wages for workers, and widely shared economic prosperity. In most countries of the Global North, the standard of living rose, the purchasing power of workers went up considerably, private consumption increased. Stark differences between the working and the middle class faded, a shift that was symbolized by widespread ownership of various household goods and amenities, and financial possibility of travelling somewhere for an annual family vacation (often by an individually owned car). During this period, being or ‘feeling’ middle class became a reality for many even if their household income suggested otherwise. If this could not be achieved by themselves, then there was the promise and aspiration for the next generation.

The United States likely came closest to the ideal of a capitalist ‘classless society’ during this time. In other countries, such as former Federal Republic of Germany the post-war Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) was transformed into a particular type of nationalism: neither ‘ethnic’, nor ‘civic’, but rooted in economic prosperity (DM-Nationalismus). In Canada, the institutionalization of free and universal health care shaped the country’s identity as a ‘caring nation’. Indeed, sometimes called the era of ‘social modernity’ (Nachtwey 2018), these postwar years were also characterized by the consolidation of the welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990) and the expansion of social citizenship rights (Marshall 1973). It was especially the right to education that furthered the impression that everyone was – or could become – middle class, and that the risk of falling through the cracks was minimal as the bottom was sealed off and the fall fettered. Importantly, for the countries mentioned above and for much of the Global North, middle class belonging was overwhelmingly white and native born.

The 1973 oil crisis slowed economic growth markedly and lead to the revival of economic liberalization, the deregulation of labour and financial markets, decreased government spending, rollbacks to social citizenship rights (Bloemraad et al. 2019), and the successive dismantling of the welfare state (Banting and Myles 2013; Berg and Gabel 2015; Bothfeld and Rosenthal 2018; Corak 2016; Korpi 2003). Neoliberalism – which refers to a trinity of ideology (which views the self-regulating free market as a superior political and moral force), governance (that stives to reward market-oriented behaviour in entrepreneurial, self-disciplining individuals), and policy (notably deregularization, liberalization, and privatization) – came to dominate the political and social realm since the 1980s (Steger and Roy 2010).⁵ It was flanked by technological transformations (e.g. the digital revolution, new means in mass transportation) and cultural change (e.g. the liberalization of traditional social norms of gender and sexuality). While the causes and consequences of these developments are complex and controversially debated, there is widespread agreement that the past not so glorious thirty years have seen a dramatic rise in income inequality across the countries of the Global North (Milanović 2016; Piketty 2013). Scholars find that most of today's economic growth is captured by the richest citizens of industrialized countries, and that wealth disparities are increasingly driven by inheritance rather than income. For some, this signals a return to the ‘gilded ages’, the dynastic patrimonial capitalism of the late nineteenth century, where aristocrats enjoyed feudal, non-meritocratic privileges (Piketty 2013; cf. Neckel 2020). Put differently, without being born rich, rising to the top economically by means of alleged middle class virtues (education, hard work, discipline) is increasingly difficult. Furthermore, middle class identity is also about aspirations and related practices, such as owning a home, sending children to college or university, learning to play an instrument, being able to travel and take vacations, etc. In many countries of the Global North, these aspirations and practices are increasingly out of reach, and this for the native-born and immigrants alike. Social mobility – an essential dimension of the social contract in liberal democracies – is stifled.

Commentators also find that income has stagnated for those in the bottom 50% of the income distribution in industrialized countries since the 1980s (Piketty, Saez, and Zucman 2018), sharply reducing the possibility to obtain or to retain middle class status. Ironically, access to free/affordable education – the ‘enabling right’ in Marshall’s (1973) account of citizenship – was cut back while the digital revolution exploded. The latter ties better pay, social esteem, and relative job stability to IT-literacy, higher education, and the ability of ‘lifelong learning’, fuelling economic and cultural disparities between, on the one hand, the college-educated parts of the middle class who are controlling cultural production and capital and, on the other hand, those without educational credentials working in low-wage jobs in the service sector. Differentiating between an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ educated middle class, for Reckwitz (2017), the levelled middle class society of postwar Germany is increasingly superseded by a four-class society. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the ‘upper class’ owns most of the property and wealth while generating substantial yearly incomes from these assets. The ‘new middle class’ is composed of individuals doing cognitive labour. According to Reckwitz (2017), it sets the tone as the dominant carrier of a newly cherished ‘singularized lifestyle’, striving for uniqueness, authenticity, and individual self-development. By contrast, the ‘old middle class’ of the post-war industrial economy and the lower or ‘precarious class’ are struggling with the rise in higher education and the technological sector and are plagued by experiences of devaluation. They may not be suffering extreme poverty, but notice that they – and/or their children – can only go down economically and in terms of social recognition.

Reckwitz’ distinction between different segments of the middle class adds a welcome nuance to our discussion. It further raises the question of who gets to belong to the (new) middle class, and who experiences (fears of) a downward spiral. Below, I will sketch-out three ways that this question is being addressed in the literature. For lack of space, this discussion cannot be extensive. Rather, it points to questions and issues raised by the notion of ‘middle class nation building through immigration.’ Some are studied by contributions to in this special issue, others are to be addressed in future research.

A first body of literature underlines that status anxieties of members of the lower and (old) middle classes are a breeding ground for right-wing extremism and the spread of populism. They are found to be related to structural changes, such as the decline of low-skilled jobs with good wages, the change in the geographic distribution of well-paying jobs to an increasingly small group of cities, a shift in cultural frameworks in popular media, and a reorganization of gender relations (Gidron and Hall 2017). Anxieties are also said to be driven by ‘nostalgic deprivation’ – the discrepancy between individuals’ understanding of the current status and their perceptions about their past – as driving the support for right-wing extremism (Gest, Tyler, and Mayer 2018). Here it is important to recall that the ‘old middle class’ identified by Reckwitz is mostly (but not exclusively) white and that its (real or perceived) economic and social downfall takes place while national identities in liberal democracies have become gradually ‘de-ethnicized’ (Joppke 2005). Furthermore, the presence and the influx of ‘ethnic others’ is becoming the norm in today’s liberal democracies. In the United States, Hochschild (2016) finds that white conservatives feel that they are being ‘left behind’ in favour of ‘line-cutter’ groups, particularly immigrants, ethnoracial minorities, and non-Christians. They express the feeling of becoming ‘strangers in their own land,’ as their once prominent position in the national ‘we-group’ of Americans is being challenged. In short, the concept of ‘middle class nation building through immigration’ needs to be examined against the backdrop of increasing ethnic heterogeneity, as well as heightened social and political polarization. This is what two papers in this special issue set out to do.

Identifying ‘middle class nation building’ as a major idea of (West-)Germany’s existence as an independent country after Nazism and the Holocaust, and for the reunification of East- and West-Germany in 1990; Schmidtke ( 2024) shows how the politics of immigration and, relatedly, the uneasy acceptance of ethnic heterogeneity have become a political wedge issue. For the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has been in power (in various coalitions) for 52 years since 1949, endorsing middle class immigration seems to have allowed the party to reframe its traditional anti-immigrant stance while maintaining core elements of its political identity: market-driven economic policies, conservative values, and identity-related modes of social closure. However, Schmidtke finds that the resulting political vacuum was quickly exploited by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) and successfully filled with a nativist backlash against all forms of immigration and cultural diversity. A similar dynamic between government policy that resembles the ideal-type of middle class nation building through immigration – arguably somewhat stronger than in the German case – and right-wing party platforms on immigration and ethnic diversity is also found in the Canadian context. Peker and Winter (2024) examine how several newly founded right-wing parties at the federal and provincial levels frame their opposition to the governing Liberal Party of Canada’s (LPC) post-2015 stance on immigration and multiculturalism. The authors show that, contrary to accepted wisdom, Canada is no longer exempt from the twenty-first-century right-wing populist wave. Far from forming a dichotomy, economic and identity considerations of nation building are merged in various combinations by right-wing parties. Positions can be found along a continuum from strongly ethnocentric conceptions of the nation to the endorsement of strictly economic, merit-based immigration. Parties defending the latter position consider Justin Trudeau’s (LPC) policies of selecting middle class immigrants as ‘not going far enough.’

Second, the question of who gets to belong to the (new) middle class is also addressed by literatures examining the demographic composition of mainstream society and the fate of the ‘second generation’ of immigrants, i.e. those born within their country of residence and (where, today, they usually hold) citizenship. There is widespread agreement that the demographic composition of the societies in the Global North is becoming ethnically more heterogeneous. Census data suggests that non-whites will soon form the demographic majority in many settler societies (and are already doing so in many of the metropoles). Dissent rather pertains to the normative implications. Kaufmann (2018), for example, posits that nations require a ‘cultural core’ to sustain social cohesion and trust in democratic institutions. He therefore regards the native-born majority ethnicity’s self-interested politics of social closure as legitimate. Orgad (2015) pledges the idea of cultural rights for national majorities. By contrast, Alba (2020; Alba and Reitz 2021) insists that, in the United States, the observed demographic shift should not be interpreted as an emerging ‘majority-minority society’ but rather as an expansion of the societal mainstream. He finds that individuals of mixed majority/minority (i.e. white/non-white) backgrounds are becoming increasingly numerous and tend to integrate into the ‘mainstream’ by adopting the majority society’s culture, values, and identity. There also is some evidence that the ‘second generation’ is outperforming prior cohorts of immigrants, mostly those of working-class background (Algan et al. 2010; Beaman 2014; Chen and Hou 2019; Jiménez 2017). Analysing 100 years of data on immigration and class mobility in the United States Abramitzky et al. (2019) find that children of immigrants from nearly every sending country have consistently higher rates of upward mobility than children of US-born citizens. Considering mechanisms for this mobility disparity, the authors find that first-generation immigrants were more likely to settle in areas with high-mobility prospects, which in today’s environment tends to be cities and urban centres. Furthermore, as the immigrant and/or ‘minority’ presence becomes more noticeable across various segments of society (geographical and culturally), what counts as ‘mainstream’ culture and tastes also changes (Jiménez 2017). For Australia, Colic-Peisker (2011) describes this as the transition from ‘working-class ethnics’ to a mostly urban ‘multicultural middle class.’ She argues that the changing immigration system, particularly the shift to a points-based system for attracting high-skilled migrants, helped to facilitate this trend (cf. Elrick 2022).

By contrast, it is especially racialized immigrants and native-born youth who still experience important barriers to social mobility and recognition in white majority countries. After controlling for education, experience, and regional allocation, Algan and colleagues (Algan et al. 2010) found that the native population in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom outperformed both first- and second-generation immigrants in the labour market. Much of this is likely due to existing racism (Creese 2019; Reitz, Simon, and Laxer 2017). Stigmatization, boundary work, non-recognition, and ascribed cultural membership are inequality-generating processes that are deeply embedded in social institutions and structures (Lamont 2018). Scholars also point out that the rise in income inequality has occurred simultaneously within race, gender, occupational, and education groups (Bayer and Charles 2018; Kim and Sakamoto 2008). Put differently, native-born members of minority groups in the (old) middle class are experiencing similar, if not worse, strains than their white counterparts. Indeed, there is also some evidence that highly skilled (first generation) immigrants are not only coming on top of white native populations (e.g. members of the lower class), but also on top of native-born racialized minorities. This has been studied extensively for African Americans (Ifatunji 2016).

A third line of inquiry underscores the changing demographic and socioeconomic profile of migrants and immigrants. Scholars in migration studies have largely focused on two extremes: low-skilled and working-class migrants on the one hand (Bean and Brown 2015; Massey et al. 1998; Wright and Clibborn 2020), and high-skilled elite migrants on the other (Cousin and Chauvin 2021; Favell 2008; Shachar and Hirschl 2013; Surak and Tsuzuki 2021).⁶ Yet, many migrants are neither among the very wealthy who can move freely without being constrained by immigration policies and bureaucracies, nor are they reliant on low-wage work for survival (Scott 2019). Rather, they belong to a category of migrants who hold a ‘middling’ social status in their countries of origin (Conradson and Latham 2005b, 229). They occupy middle class spaces not simply because of specific socioeconomic factors or migrant types, but because they are often well-educated, economically resourced (albeit not elite), and embody middle class cultures, privileges, identities, and aspirations (Conradson and Latham 2005b; Robertson and Roberts 2022). Individuals commonly referred to as ‘middle class migrants’ include skilled and professional workers, young migrants on international work experiences, migrants who temporarily leave secure and well-paid professional jobs to travel and gain new experiences abroad, lifestyle migrants looking for a better quality of life, and migrants using migration to improve (or secure) their middle class status (Conradson and Latham 2005a; Lui and Curran 2020; Robertson and Roberts 2022; Scott 2019). van Bochove (2012) identifies three criteria that define migrants as middle class: they have a job that requires at least an intermediate vocational education, they are good (self-) entrepreneurs, and they have a middle class gross income per year.

Research shows that the global hierarchy of nationalities incentivizes relatively privileged individuals to engage in migration, immigration, and the pursuit of a second citizenship to gain economic benefits, a sense of security, higher social status, or the possibility of intergenerational wealth transmission (Faist 2019; Shachar 2011). The rise in middle class migrants should not surprise us, as the middle class is expanding in many migrant-sending countries. The period of rapid globalization from 1988 to 2008 witnessed a notable increase in what Lakner and Milanovic (2016, 225) call the ‘global median class,’ with the percentage of the global population belonging to that group increasing from 23% in 1988 to 40% in 2008. Arslan et al. (2015) find evidence of improved education levels, including a 70% increase in the number of tertiary-educated (or post-secondary educated) migrants in member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the first decade of the new century, amounting to 35 million migrants mainly from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is increasingly common that migrants from countries with expanding middle classes, such as China and India, are well-trained and have middle class skills, customs, and expectations as they often belong to privileged classes (Robertson and Roberts 2022). In short, middle class migration is multifaceted, often prompted by personal aspirations and motivations of relatively privileged populations rather than economic necessity (Conradson and Latham 2005a; Robertson and Roberts 2022). It is these ‘migrants of choice’ (Patzelt 2021), including those from the Global South, who are sought after in the ‘global race for talent’ and coveted by allegedly race-blind, merit-based immigration policies (Robertson and Roberts 2022).

Nevertheless, while middle class migrants are relatively privileged individuals, their migration trajectories remain unpredictable and precarious, with shifting privilege and marginalization (Robertson and Roberts 2022). While middle class skills and attitudes facilitate migration, immigration, and naturalization processes (Winter 2021), they may not translate easily into an equivalent status in the receiving society. Studying how highly skilled immigrants from Poland negotiate their status positions in a multifarious German middle class, Nowicka ( 2024) highlights the fluidity of the middle class concept. What it means to be middle class varies from country to country. Alleged middle class credentials (such as education and professional skills) and attitudes (such as the endorsement – or not – of cultural diversity) do not travel easily across borders. Nowicka finds that even highly educated white immigrants from Poland do not become members of the German middle class ‘by default.’ Their strive to achieve this status ‘by effort’ is hampered by economic protectionism, the fragmentation of the native-born middle class(es), and variations of middle classness along gender lines. These complexities arguably inhibit an easy realization of the middle class nation building project. Furthermore, in many of today’s aging societies of the Global North, immigration policies deliberately strive to attract middle class migrants from the Global South. Upon arrival, many become racialized as non-white and labelled as undesirable, despite having the same or higher levels of skills and economic resources as those considered to be white (Hussain 2018; Robertson and Roberts 2022). This can result in their marginalization and the reduction of middle class privileges including downward social mobility, deskilling, and ‘brain waste’, that is university-educated, middle class migrants working in low-wage jobs below their skill level (Robertson and Roberts 2022; Scott 2019). Some middle class migrants are thus willing to temporarily work in low-wage jobs in the hope of eventually improving their socioeconomic status or that of their children (Kawashima 2021; Scott 2019). Others consider moving on (Montagna, della Puppa, and Kofman 2021). This brings us to the final concept of the title of this special issue: the question of immigration versus migration.

4. Immigration or the ‘end of settlement’?

Traditionally, nation-states have resorted to mass schooling to linguistically homogenize the population (E. Weber 1976), create a suitable workforce (Gellner 1983), and facilitate citizens’ socio-economic participation (Marshall 1973). Nation building through immigration supplements this strategy by actively recruiting population and labour from outside the national territory (Zolberg 2006). However, as Zolberg (1987) has famously put it, migrants may be ‘wanted’ to meet economic demands, but not all are equally ‘welcome’ to settle and become permanent members of the polity. Importantly, the idea of nation building through immigration implies a permanent welcome of newcomers. This is practiced by the settler societies of North America and Australasia that grant permanent residence upon arrival to ‘immigrants’, treat them like citizens in waiting (Motomura 2006), and emphasize immigrants’ demographic, cultural, social, and economic ‘integration’ into the receiving society – with all of this concept’s normative, theoretical, and empirical shortcomings (Favell 2022; Schinkel 2017).

Immigration, however, is only half of the story, or perhaps even less. First, these very settler societies have also adopted harsh practices of making it clear that ‘unsolicited’ – allegedly illegal – migrants at their border are neither wanted, nor welcome – regardless of whether the latter are fleeing political persecution or economic destitution (Abella and Troper 1982; FitzGerald 2019; Mountz 2020). Nation building through ‘wanted’ immigration is thus largely predicated upon the control of borders.

Second, while migration policies targeting foreign low-skilled workers for temporary migration (not ‘immigration’) have existed in the past (e.g. Chinese railroad workers in Canada; Italian, Greek, Turkish, Gastarbeiter in Germany), non-permanent migration schemes, usually by means of temporary work visas, have grown exponentially common in recent years, and not only in the low skilled work sector (Boucher and Gest 2018). In the United States, temporary migration status has long been the prerequisite for immigration (Portes 2020). Canada has been admitting more temporary migrants than immigrants (with permanent resident status) for almost twenty years now. In the low-skill sector, temporary or ‘circular’ migration schemes involving seasonal agricultural workers, live-in caregivers, and health care professionals/nurses are notorious for facilitating exploitation, vulnerability, precarity, as well as group-level discriminations (Cook-Martín 2019; Faist 2019, chapters 3, 4; Vosko 2022). At the other end of the spectrum, skilled and high-skilled migration schemes like the American three-year H1-B temporary work visa allow for the import of human capital without being tied to permanent residency. In Canada, two (or more) step migration schemes which grant access to permanent residence only after a probationary period of temporary employment have become frequent even at the level of skilled migration, e.g. professionals with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and students (Crossman, Hou, and Picot 2020; Paquet 2020). Abu-Laban (2024) examines the discursive emphasis on ‘skills’ in Canadian immigration policy. Locating the emergence of this discourse in the post-1960s, precisely when the country was adopting the formally race-neutral points system, she relates both the tenacity of the skills discourse and its various mutations to the Canadian version of middle class nation building under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (LPC). Examining three distinct policy initiatives, Abu-Laban shows how the ‘skills’ discourse is applied to temporary ‘skilled’ workers, to the resettlement of ‘skilled’ refugees, and – since the Covid-19 pandemic – to the ‘essential skills’ of health care workers. Abu-Laban cautions us to consider ‘that ‘skills’ itself is a discourse, and a signifier’ that camouflages and reinforces inequities in both the Canadian and global contexts. While opportunities to gradually ‘earn’ the right to permanent residence and citizenship remain for these migrants, scholars point to the physical, emotional, and economic costs of going through multiple temporary legal statuses with different residency conditions for an indeterminate period (Bélanger et al. 2023; González 2022, 2020).

Dauvergne (2016, 7) refers to this development as ‘the end of settler societies’. For her, with states targeting migrants purely for economic purposes, the rise in temporary migration schemes, and the transformation of multiculturalism policy into diversity management, the ideological ‘glue’ that allows individuals of many cultures become members of one society vanishes: ‘immigration is no longer about ‘settlement’ or ‘society’’ (Dauvergne 2016, 124). Cook-Martín (2024) concurs. He underlines that temporariness has become the new normal in (im)migration policy. Studying two periods of temporary labour migration programmes (TLMPs) in Canada – those before the 1990s, which followed a Keynesian logic and resembled precursors like the bracero programmes in the United States and the Gastarbeiter programmes in Western Europe – and their more recent neoliberal counterparts, Cook-Martín finds that ‘early TLMPs have complemented the permanent migration schemes of Canada and efforts toward middle class nation building, but more recently they have begun to substitute permanent modes of immigration.’ Importantly, while in the past, TLMPs contributed to the construction of native born – and sometimes even ethnically heterogeneous or ‘multicultural’ – middle classes, the members of those middle classes are now increasingly squeezed as the new TLMPs benefit primarily the upper classes in the receiving countries, specifically employers in key economic sectors like service, food provision, agriculture, and higher education.

Migrants, however, are not without agency. In an environment increasingly characterized by contractual social relations in/with their new country of residence, they adapt to the new circumstances. For example, scholars point to ‘strategic-instrumental attitudes’ towards the institution of citizenship and nationality more generally. They reveal that, increasingly, individuals strive to acquire a second citizenship as an ‘insurance policy’, ‘premium passport’, commodity, status symbol, or ethnic marker (see contributions to special issue edited by Harpaz and Mateos 2019). These ‘citizens of convenience’ as they are called in the Canadian context, are accused of not being emotionally attached to their country of second citizenship and alleged to ‘move on’ when local conditions worsen (Winter 2014a). Even more hotly debated are the purchase of citizenship by wealthy millionaires (Shachar 2017) and so-called ‘birth tourism,’ the aim to give birth on the soil of a high-status country to acquire that citizenship for their children by migrant mothers (Balta and Altan-Olcay 2016; Harder 2020; Harpaz 2019). Advani et al. (2020, 18) argue that high-skilled and elite migrants ‘sort internationally to where they can receive the highest returns.' Finding that migration accounted for most of the growth in the United Kingdom’s top 1% income share over the past 20 years, they explain that this income concentration is not caused by a reallocation of resources, but rather from changes in the population. The authors suggest that migrants may indeed leave should taxation rules be altered to their disadvantage. In other words, ‘when migrant communities are wealthy, integration is merely a choice’ (Dauvergne 2016, 140).

As a consequence, highly skilled and skilled immigrants are often portrayed as relentless movers with high incomes and wealth accumulation – as Anywheres, in Goodhart’s (2017) provocative terms, mobile elites who form their identity on the basis of their achievements. They tend to be socially liberal, university educated, and live in major cities. Anywheres are allegedly different from Somewheres, whose identity is shaped by ascribed criteria, their place of birth, the sense of being rooted in a local community, and who tend to be socially conservative and less educated. While this image rightly points to a growing urban/rural divide in the countries of the Global North (e.g. Manduca 2019; Wilkinson 2019) it fails to capture the nuances of how skilled migrants relate to their new country of residence. For example, we need to know whether and how the attitudes of middle class skilled migrants (who are not rich entrepreneurs, top-level athletes, or star piano players) differ from those of both their very affluent upper-class and their less-skilled counterparts.

Considered ‘unproblematic immigrants,’ middle class migrants have so far flown under the radar of scholarly attention. Recent scholarship, however, points to a possible negative association between immigrants’ high level of structural integration⁷ and their emotional attachment to their new country of residence (Geurts, Davids, and Spierings 2021; Geurts, Lubbers, and Spierings 2020; van Maaren and van de Rijt 2020; Verkuyten 2016). Rather than becoming more oriented and committed to their new country of residence, highly educated and economically successful (im)migrants have been found to express lower levels of belonging and identification with destination countries. This counterintuitive finding is called ‘integration paradox’. The integration paradox is interpreted differently in the literature. On the one hand, is assumed that immigrants with a higher structural position (and high education) have more contact with the native-born population and are therefore de facto more exposed to discrimination (Tuppat and Gerhards 2021). They are also more likely to understand unwelcoming public and political debates, and are assumed to be more receptive of group-level discrimination of ‘their’ ethnic group (Verkuyten 2016). On the other hand, it is argued that skilled immigrants express little belonging to a single country because they have a cosmopolitan outlook (Geurts, Davids, and Spierings 2021), in which they are actually quite similar to their native-born ‘new’ and ‘educated’ middle class counterparts.

Studying the impact of education upon the way newcomers think and feel about Germany as their new country of residence by means of a large-N survey, Diehl and Trittler ( 2024) find that highly educated third-country nationals feel unfairly treated at first, but their feelings of marginalization weaken over time, and overall, they express closer ties to Germans than do migrants from within the European Union (EU). The authors conclude that there is ‘very limited empirical evidence that skilled migrants prefer to stay ‘happily apart’ and keep their distance from their new home’. Rather, racialized and religiously othered third-country nationals from the Global South – who, in public debates are often perceived as ‘not integrating’ – are emotionally attached to their new country of residence and highly ‘determined to become ‘truly German'.’ It is thus ‘bad news that initially, the very individuals targeted by the ‘middle class nation building project’ […] are the least likely to feel welcome and treated fairly in Germany.’ Indeed, these individuals may leave soon after arrival because they cannot find adequate work and/or feel culturally marginalized. Diehl and Trittler’s findings underscore calls upon EU countries ‘to improve their policies to attract and retain talented migrants’ in order to strengthen their position as knowledge-based economies (Geurts, Lubbers, and Spierings 2020, 1844, emphasis in original). But for how long should the retention last? Months, years, until the job is done? Or much longer, encouraging settlement, citizenship, and raising the next generation?

The scholarship reviewed in this section complicates the idea of immigration as a linear process, a one-size-fits-all approach, and a definite, permanent move. It also underlines the fact that immigration policies have become – if they had not ever been – multifaceted layers of social closure and conditions for admission with an increasing emphasis on temporary status and stepwise access to citizenship based on performance in the labour market. I agree with Joppke ( 2024) that this development is driven by the logic of neoliberalism which, in its full logical rigour and consequence, does indeed undermine nation building as it discourages any sort of not strictly reciprocal solidary and non-utilitarian group formation. But would it then not undermine ‘nationalism’ as well? With regard to the terminology suggested in the title of this special issue, where does the partial shift from immigration to migration leave us?

***

In lieu of a conclusion, I will briefly react to Joppke’s ( 2024) reservations against the usefulness of the ideal-type of middle class nation building through immigration. Three of Joppke’s arguments relate to the ‘nation building’ portion, one is directed against identifying the latter as a ‘middle class’ project. To summarize, ‘‘nation building’ is too grand and too transitive a term (‘states-working-on-people’) to describe what is going on. […] Even classic immigrant countries, like Canada, pursue economically instrumentalist, if not ‘mean-spirited’ immigration policies today that are devoid of the grand nation building ambition of the past. […] Current high-skilled immigration policies […] are too haphazardous and patchwork, too insufficiently coordinated to warrant the ‘nation building’ label. […] To aspire and ‘work hard’ […] is no longer the provincial middle class habitus but the general creed of neoliberal societies’ (Joppke 2024).

Joppke’s argument against nation building fails to appreciate that the latter can be defined as group formation writ large (and striving for a sovereign state). From a micro-sociological perspective, every social unit – whether group, nation, or society – is constantly in the making and built out of patterned forms of social relations (sociation and communalization in Weberian terms). Joppke and I agree that nationalism is still a necessary ingredient in the bounding of societies, fortified by borders and sometimes walls. Joppke considers this a ‘state-level nationalism’ (top-down rather than bottom-up). But who forms the state in liberal democracies?

The advantage of the nation building terminology is that it insinuates instances of social closure and group-formation as processes. It also allows us to apprehend the (re)making of national communities within global power hierarchies. In fact, despite all the individualizing, solidarity-undermining power of neoliberalism, we are not (yet?) observing the dissolution of the social units at stake. On the contrary, the boundaries of the nation-state continue to protect some members of society more than others. Research suggests that those who make it into the new middle class benefit considerably from national boundaries which allow them to rely on horizontal boundaries towards the bottom rather than vertical boundaries vis-à-vis similarly well-situated friends and co-workers of other national/ethnic origins (Hartmann 2020). The dissolution of the national status group is not in their interest, as this would also remove their ascribed (in the case of native-born) or achieved (in the case of naturalized immigrants) symbolic ‘national capital’ and level the playing field for a true competition of skilled individuals at global level.

(Im)migration policies are mediated forms of social closure. They may be haphazardous, fragmented, and interest-group influenced, but overall, they tend to benefit the upper and new middle classes more than they serve workers. This applies even stronger to temporary labour migration programmes and probationary (stepwise) immigration for skilled workers, as both are economically benefitting the native-born middle class without immediately challenging this group’s social position. However, I agree with Joppke that the traditional middle class trust in education and hard work has exponentially grown under neoliberalism. To paraphrase M. Weber (1988), the Puritans wanted to live for their work (as a calling); we are forced to do so (see Mau 2015 for an insightful analysis). Here, the concept of middle class nation building through immigration (not migration) helps us to compare and contrast empirical findings against the logical abstraction. However, I admit, while the concept does not aim to project a normative view, it emerges from the somewhat optimistic position that building prosperous egalitarian societies de longue durée with a functioning democracy is still what policymakers are – and should be – aiming for. My hope is that, as an ideal-type, the concept is narrow enough to capture reality and advance our knowledge, as well as broad enough to kindle our imagination and inspire debate, such as the one the contributors engage with in this special issue. I am equally intrigued to learn more about the issues the ideal-type camouflages or fails to map. Finally, I am acutely aware that the idea of middle class nation building through immigration raises difficult normative questions that – for reasons of space and a disciplinary division of labour – are largely left unaddressed in this special issue. Here is an idea for another volume.

Acknowledgements

This paper has benefitted from stimulating discussions with the members of the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. A very special thanks to Michèle Lamont. The contributions to this special issue were originally presented at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center of International Affairs (WCFIA) and the Canada Program. Many thanks to participants and discussants (see Alm, Friederike, and Derek J. Robey. 2023. ‘Middle Class Nation Building through Immigration?’ Canadian Ethnic Studies 55: 147–152. https://doi.org/10.1353/ces.2023.0006). Some of the papers were also presented at the Council for European Studies’ 2022 annual meeting with Phil Triadafilopoulos as a wonderful discussant. My sincere gratitude also goes to the contributors of this special issue, to all external reviewers, to my students at the University of Ottawa, and to the editors of JEMS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges generous financial support from Harvard University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Notes

1 For more encompassing taxonomies, see for example, Howard (2009), Boucher and Gest (2018).

2 Taylor (1993, 183) differentiates between “first level diversity” – that is, a relative homogenizing expression of individual-based belonging to the Canadian nation shared by ethnic minorities and English-speaking Canadians – and “second level diversity” or “deep diversity” – that is the expression of community-based belonging to Canada formulated by many French Canadians, (French-speaking) Quebeckers, and Indigenous peoples.

3 As a mode of integration, “diversity” no longer foregrounds the rights of immigrants and ethnic minorities and the recognition of their collective identity. Rather it praises ethnic heterogeneity and individual cultural competences for creating economic opportunities such selling goods and services (Faist 2009; see also Kerr 2018).

4 Inspired by empirical observations from the Canadian, American, and German contexts, the concept of “middle class nation building” as proposed here does not pretend to have explanatory value for non-democratic countries. It would be wonderful to learn if/how the concept might be adapted to other contexts and if/how this would require our thinking to change.

5 Notably, this period is also characterized by an accelerated transnationalization of social inequality and its concomitant political causes and consequences (Faist 2019).

6 Both will be part of the discussion in the next section.

7 Structural integration refers to immigrants’ (economic) participation in structures and institutions due to high educational qualifications, adequate language skills, and strong professional skills.