Research on Immigration/Ethnicity in Europe and The United States: A Comparison

Abstract

The article compares the main research agendas and methodological and theoretical approaches informing current studies of immigration and ethnicity in the United States and Europe (represented by six countries: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden). The European part of the report focuses on the common features of immigration and ethnic research in the countries selected for examination as compared with the American studies. In accounting for the reported similarities and differences between the two continents, I identify the contributing circumstances in the examined societies at large as well as in the characteristics of the scholarly environment in which the research in question is conducted.

NOTES

Notes

¹ In contrast to the paucity of cross-national research on assimilation/adaptation of immigrants and their children, there exists an abundance of comparative studies on immigration laws and policies of different countries, including the United States versus Europe. (A good overview of such studies can be found at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications.)

² If research undertaken by trend-setting scholars can be treated as an indicator of the forthcoming interest in their field of speciality, the current comparative European versus American projects of Richard Alba should soon translate into a more comparative focus in American immigration and ethnic studies at large. Noteworthy, if it signals the rise of broader comparative interests among (im)migration specialists, is also a recent volume in International Migration. Propects and Policies in a Global Market (2004), edited by two renowned experts in the field, Douglas Massey and J. Edward Taylor, which overviews the “trends and issues” in international migration in different regions of the world.

³ Germany, where scholarly research is funded both by the governmental agencies and independent foundations, departs from this European pattern—see the section on intercountry differences in European research for more details.

⁴ One of my European colleagues, questioned about a more structuralist versus combined, structure-and-agency difference in the explanatory approaches found in European and American immigration and ethnic studies, suggested that the American “individualist myth” may be another factor in making that country's scholars more agency conscious. It is possible, but I am not convinced: American social science specialists in the field who examine in their research and teach about immigrant and ethnic groups trapped in the underclass ghetto and encountering persistent racial discrimination tend to be “professionally” critical of the American individualist myth. Unless, of course, one would claim that they carry this myth in their unconscious.

⁵ In a recent example of the latter, Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson (2007) propose a conceptualization of the effects of international migration in terms of glocalization. The idea is certainly interesting, but it would be more useful if the authors would link their propositions with the existing models of (im)migrants' assimilation/integration in the field of immigration and ethnic studies. The absence of any references to such studies in the bibliography suggests Giulianotti and Robertson are not aware of their existence.