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Immigrant Nations
ISBN: 978-0-745-64962-7
May 2011
Polity
300 pages
Based on his deep knowledge of the European and American experience, Scheffer shows how immigration entails the loss of familiar worlds, both for immigrants and for host societies. The conflict that accompanies all major migratory movements is not the result of a failure of integration, but is part of a search for new ways of living together. It prompts an intensive process of self-examination on all sides.
Immigration has such a profound impact because it goes to the heart of institutions like the welfare state and liberties like the freedom of expression; liberal democracies developing into immigrant nations go through an existential change. To cope with these challenges, Scheffer argues, we should move beyond multiculturalism and take a fresh look at the meaning of citizenship in a globalizing world.
This principled and path-breaking book will establish itself as a classic work on immigration and will be an indispensable text for anyone interested in one of the most important social and political issues of our time.
• The book draws on the very important experience of The Netherlands, which (along with Britain) was a pioneer of multiculturalism and has recently experienced a backlash to it, but the book is genuinely comparative and it situates the Dutch experience in relation to immigration in Britain, the US and other countries.
• Scheffer argues that we now need a new approach to immigration that is based on the ‘principle of reciprocity': native populations cannot ask of newcomers any more than they are prepared to ask of themselves.
• This book has been hugely successful in The Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere and there is every reason to believe that it will become one of the classic books on immigration and the social and political responses to it.