Introduction: National Identity in an Age of Migration: The US Experience

The six articles that follow in this special issue explore from a variety of angles the impact that contemporary migration to the USA is having, or more to the point, what citizens and noncitizens alike believe it is having, on American culture and national solidarity. The USA is little different from the other world’s liberal democracies that in the second half of the past century became destinations for migrants from the global South and East. In every country that has experienced mass migration during this time, one finds considerable fear and anxiety about what migration is doing to the nation – economically, politically, and (especially) culturally. This is the social space within which migrants and their advocates must navigate ways to accommodate to the country of settlement, often while seeking to maintain ties to those left behind in the sending country. As has become more evident in the present century, in the wake of 9/11 and sub-

sequent terrorist attacks and the intensification of the security state, states are powerful players in this drama – a development that the post-nationalist thesis, advanced in the late 1990s, could not have predicted. In Waldinger’s (2015) recent effort to offer a state-centred theory of the cross-border connection, one that builds on while simultaneously criticising transnational theorists, he stresses the efforts of states to first determine who gets in and who does not and second to ‘cage’ those permitted entry. By caging he means that states engage in a process of political re-socialisation in which newcomers are expected to embrace the normative expectations of that society and identify with it – in the process placing distance between themselves and their homelands (see Kivisto forthcoming for an analysis of this argument). But immigrants are not simply the pawns of state actors. They also act on their own initiative and often seek to prevent the divergence the receiving state demands from

occurring – with varying levels of success. They also have spokespersons within their ranks and advocates in the receiving society who seek to engage the receiving state and the larger public in an effort to have a voice in determining the terms incorporation. At a symbolic level, most of the world’s liberal democracies recognise and even

appear to embrace the reality of living in a pluralistic society. The USA, for example, has emblazoned on its national seal the words ‘e pluribus unum’ (usually translated as ‘out of many, one’) while the official motto of the European Union (EU) is ‘unity in diversity’. The former, which dates to the latter part of the eighteenth century, can be read in two ways: (1) as a description of a nation founded by immigrants, but one in which over time the many gives way to the forging of a national identity predicated on a homogeneous ‘people’; or (2) as a nation in which culturally dissimilar people manage to maintain their differences while establishing a transcendent national unity. In other words, it could be read as an endorsement of a homogenising form of assimilation or a multicultural valorisation of difference. In contrast, the EU motto would appear to be explicitly intended to embrace the second of these options. But it need not be read as an endorsement of multiculturalism and as an implicit critique of Fortress Europe, for the diversity in mind may be limited to the national, cultural, and linguistic differences that characterise the 28 member nations, while creating a bright boundary separating Europeans from non-Europeans, particularly those from the global South and East. Newcomers inevitably put to the test the extent to which any society is prepared to

embrace diversity, as was evident during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the classic settler nations – the USA foremost among them, because it absorbed more immigrants than its counterparts combined – responded to the presence of people who were different – in terms of religion, race, language, and so forth. During that time, as the numbers of Eastern and Southern Europeans steadily increased, so too did anti-immigration sentiments and campaigns. The net result of a long, protracted battle between pro-immigration and anti-immigration forces was the triumph of the latter with the passage in 1924 of stringent anti-immigration legislation that succeeded in ending mass migration to the nation for the next four decades. It is also evident in the current age of migration, an era in which it is estimated that

there were at the end of 2013 approximately 232 million migrants globally. Of that total, nearly 46 million, or 20 per cent of the total, reside in the USA (Connor et al. 2013). With a population of 318 million, this means that immigrants account for 13 per cent of the total. By way of comparison, the total number of immigrants residing in all of the EU member states exceeds 50 million, more than the total in the USA. Yet, given that the EU’s population, at 503 million, is considerably larger than the USA, immigrants constitute a slightly smaller percentage of the EU population, in the range of 10 per cent. As with the past, as levels of immigration have risen in major receiving countries, so,

too, has opposition to immigration. A majority of citizens in the USA and the EU think that immigration levels are too high. At the same time, on both sides of the Atlantic those same citizens overestimate the actual numbers of immigrants residing

in their respective countries (Citrin and Sides 2008). Underlying opposition is anxiety about the future well-being of the nation, but what precisely is it that produces such anxiety? A growing body of research focusing specifically on the USA has examined this question While it appears at times to be a demographic fear of being, in the language of nativists, ‘swamped by foreigners’, the research to date has focused on two other factors as being crucial: economic and cultural. The economic can be divided into what are perceived to be threats to the individual’s own well-being versus the threats that immigrants are presumed to present to the nation at large. Without entirely discounting the importance attached to the economic impact on the individual, the consensus among scholars is that this is far less consequential in the minds of a majority of the American public than the latter (Hainmueller and Hopkins 2014). This applies both to the question of whether or not immigrants are perceived to threaten one’s own job or are a drain on tax dollars. On the other hand, concerns about the negative impact of immigrants on the economic wellbeing of the nation as a whole are considerably more salient. Even more significant, however, are cultural issues, specifically perceptions about

the impact of immigrants on national identity. In this regard, Schildkraut (2011: 160-94) contends that negative attitudes toward immigrants differ from negative attitudes toward African Americans. Whereas negative stereotypes of the latter revolve around what she describes as ‘violating the liberal norms of self-reliance and hard work’, recent immigrants are often seen as hard working, but that is cast in a negative light, for they are accused of violating ‘civic republican and incorporationist notions of national identity’ by remaining too attached to their particular ethnic identities and by ‘rejecting the civic duty of assimilation’ (Schildkraut 2011, p. 161). An example that supports her conclusions can be found in an experiment conducted by Hainmueller and Hopkins (2012) that called for subjects to select among different ideal types of immigrants. One of their findings was that those immigrants who have not acquired English-language proficiency are viewed unfavourably by a broad spectrum of Americans regardless of socioeconomic status, educational attainment level, or political party preferences. It needs to be stressed that theUSpublic is not uniformly opposed to immigrants or to

immigration. One can point out that after the 2008 recession there was no groundswell of opposition to immigration (Fetzer 2011, p. 15). Given its status as a settler nation, the USA is more open to cultural diversity than are Europeans (Citrin and Sides 2008). In a survey of polling trends regarding immigration from 1992 to 2012,Muste (2013, p. 402) points out that since 2001, about half of the American people believe that ‘immigrants contribute to this country’ rather than ‘cause problems’. Majorities contend that immigration is a ‘good’ rather than a ‘bad’ thing for the nation. At the same time, amajority of the public is opposed to increased levels of immigration. Moreover, positive opinions about legal migrants, particularly highly educated white-collar professionals, are quite different from the considerably more negative views of undocumented immigrants. Majorities reaching as high as 80 per cent believe that the government is not doing enough to combat illegal immigration, while somewhat smaller majorities

believe it ought to spendmore to tighten border security (Muste 2013, pp. 409-410). At the same time, when asked whether the undocumented already in the country should be deported, permitted to continue to work for a limited period of time, or should be allowed to become citizens, a majority opt for granting citizenship. Muste’s (2013, p. 413) assessment of these varied and sometimes seemingly contra-

dictory positions is accurate: the American public is ambivalent about immigration and its potential implications for economic well-being and in particular for social solidarity. In part, this ambivalence can be attributed to changes in the nation’s model of integration. Foner (2012, see also Gerstle 2001) has noted that the idea that the USA is a nation of immigrants and that we value pluralism, though it had its advocates earlier, did not really take hold until the post-Second World War era, several decades after mass immigration had ended. Thus, the ideal of a nation defined in terms of its ethnic diversity arose only when the immigrant experience constituted what historian John Higham (1975, p. 80) described as a ‘transcendental memory’. In short, the ambivalence felt towards contemporary immigrants is due to the fact that while the ideal of being an immigrant nation is rooted in the past, the post-1965 wave of immigration is impacting the country in real time. But public opinion does not tell the whole story. Rather, it ought to be construed, to

borrow the language of Alexander (2006, p. 191), as ‘the sea [… ] in which civil society must swim’. It is in the civil sphere that differing political visions of a just society compete, using the institutions of civil society to advance their claims. In Alexander’s account, social movement mobilisation is a key factor in effecting social change aimed at civic repair. While his focus has been on progressive movements – the American women’s and civil rights movements – he stresses that there is a darker side to the civil sphere insofar as progressive forces meet up with uncivil reactionary countermovements intent on promoting a parochial, exclusionary vision of national identity predicated on the perpetuation of existing patterns of marginalisation and inequality. And he furthermore points to the centrality of the mass media in shaping and influencing movement success or failure. The rise of right-wing populist parties during the past two decades is a reflection of

the efforts of reactionary counter-movements to advance an anti-immigration agenda (Mudde 2007). This calls for both steering public opinion toward their worldview and pressuring policy makers and politicians to endorse anti-immigration measures. Such political movements are evident in most of the world’s liberal democracies, whether they are historic settler states or countries that have only recently become nations of immigration, countries where immigrants constitute over 10 per cent of the total population and those where the figure is much lower. Some of the parties are clearly fascist, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn and Hungary’s Jobbik. Others are perhaps not as extremist, but have histories of anti-Semitism and more recently uncivil expressions of Islamophobia, with France’s National Front being an example. Still others seek to downplay racism, while drawing bright boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, as can be seen in the UK’s UK Independence Party and in Finland’s Finns Party.