Preliminary Programme

In the age of globalisation businesses are globally active, the powers of nation states are crumbling away and borders are increasingly porous whilst people are becoming more and more mobile. An increasingly integrated economy provides for border-extending international labour markets and thereby for the emergence of global migration systems. In consequence, 'the world is on the move' (Bauman 1998). Will the 'century of refugees' (Grossman and Tartakower 1944), as the 20. century has repeatedly been called be followed by the 'century of nomads', as Schlögel (2002) indicates? In that view, the new epoch seems to already correlate with a specific typology of migration. Recent research into immigration in some European Union member states (IAPASIS) have provided some empirical results that go beyond known forms such as permanent immigration, forced migration, seasonal (and) pendular migration, or transnational migration. It is about individuals whose economic activities and whose social networks are extended over several countries. There are patterns emerging that can be interpreted as post-modern nomadism. But is nomadism a promising epistemological category as Braidotti (1994) suggests; what would be the methodological variables; and which features facilitate nomadism?

Historically, nomads, with no clear territorial or national roots, moved under forces of nature, as clans or extended families, following their flocks, and taking their possessions with them. Nomadism was inconvenient for territorial states, with boundaries of land and borders of governance. Post-modern nomadism is usually the movement of highly flexible and highly mobile workers under economic forces, between short-term employments, sometimes facilitated by governments, sometimes ignored, and sometimes strenuously prosecuted. It represents a challenge to many countries' immigration policies as well as to traditional concepts of membership and justice (Jordan and Düvell 2003). This type of migrants seems to reflect the emergence of a new historically specific global migration system, possibly characteristic for migration processes under conditions of globalisation.

The paper will present the results of a 2003/2004 European University Institute research project and aims to clarify the concept and its variables.

References:
Bauman, Z. (1998): Globalisation, the human consequences, Cambridge: Polity
Braidotti, R. (1994): Nomadic subjects - embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory, New York: Columbia University Press
Grossman, K.R., Tartakower, A. (1944): The Jewish refugee, New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs
Jordan, B. and Düvell, F. (2003), Migration: The Boundaries of Equality and Justice, Cambridge: Polity
Schlögel, K. (2002): Planet der Nomaden, in: Schlögel, K.: Die Mitte liegt ostwärts, Frankfurt: Hanser, pp. 65 - 123
IAPASIS, www.iue.it/RSCAS/research/IAPASIS/Index.html (Show less)

‘Fortress Europe’ and its populations are currently witnessing a shift from the ‘zero-immigration’ policies, established in the 1980s, to ‘re-population’ attitudes. Immigration in Europe is still the preserve of the national governments, but contemporary discussions on a common European immigration policy stand to expand the role of the European Commission, both in advocating and implementing policies on the integration of immigrants to European Union member states. Referring to Muslims in Europe, ‘East’ - ‘West’ relations can be seen to undergo rapid changes in the light of post-September the 11th dynamics and European enlargement processes.

Implications of transnationalisation of citizenship have not yet been systematically explored (Faist, 2000), and the emerging diversity amongst the already multicultural, multireligious and multiethnic societies in Europe has not yet been given sufficient academic and political attention.

Exploring Europe’s changing notions of national citizenship with particular emphasis on the freedom of religious practice (focusing on Muslims in Europe) provides an unique opportunity to break new academic ground. In the article, I intend to question the contemporary tensions and paradoxes between the political discourse on immigration, and the economic and demographic needs for European states to accept new immigrants. The paper will be based on research focused on the children of those immigrant groups that have migrated to France, Germany and Belgium from the 1960s to the present as they will exemplify the successes and failures of each distinctly national attitude and policy towards immigration and 'integration'. Through an empirical analysis of Muslim communities and their organisation of religious practice in the urban spaces of Paris, Berlin and Brussels, I aim to present distinct patterns of practised citizenship and assess their respective social, cultural and economic networks. Furthermore, it would be interesting to debate about the immigrants’ intra- and inter-European transnational networks whilst also exploring the groups’ relations with their countries of origin.

The high unemployment rates amongst immigrants in Europe and rising racist and xenophobic attitudes within European societies will pose severe challenges in advocating European-wide immigration and integration policies. Having recently attended the first conference at the European Commission (20-21st of March, 2002) on ‘Intercultural Dialogues’ I can confirm that the issues of European cultural and social integration, finally, find ever more resonance. The main objective, it seems, is to guarantee each group a representative place in Europe’s urban spaces, where difference and citizenship are predominantly mediated in everyday life. Hopefully, the 2004 social science history conference will contribute to the realisation of this objective. (Show less)

In this paper I will compare three large immigrant groups which were considered at the time as problematic and threatening (Irish in Great Britain, Poles in Germany and Italians in France) with three recent groups (West Indians in Great Britain; Turks in Germany and Algerians in France). Building on the discussion in the US on the differences and similarities between old and new migrants (Foner 2000) I will try to ascertain to what extent the long term integration process of new migrants in Western Europe resembles that of the old groups (Show less)

Locating us in how it has been running the speeches around immigration in the last year, we can think about how the contemporary European societies are being influenced by the present migratory flows. The political speeches during the spanish presidence of UE have been marked by a tendency to emphasize that the absorption of migrants by the new Europe in just construction has its limits. The discussions of the European Council (Sevilla, June 2002) were reduced to speak about migration like a question of public order and police control. If some of us had been born in Ecuador and wants to travel to the Europe that we see through the mass-media, we would not doubt in thinking that the greater problem of Europe at the moment is the fight against illegal migration. The European Council of Sevilla, made us feel that the borders were higher, that the limits between "European" and the new migrants were every time longer. The real data, however, if we consulted the Eurostat of end of the 2000, speak us of an entrance of migrants that is compensated by an exit of which decided to return to its countries of origin, as in times, back the spanish people who did migrated to Europe land and, after the economic benefit, returned to Spain with its families. And nevertheless, the only speech that arrives at the public opinion, from different channels and not only through mass media, is the one of a fortified Europe, that cannot assume greater flow of migrants. As Rosi Braidotti said, the tendency to develop a sovereignty of the Union can decline in replacing old "eurocentrism" in a new "europeism ", that is to say, in the belief of a ethnically pure Europe. Although the myth that formalized the American identity has been based on a multicultural past, the constitution of the European identity, has been link to the idea of a cultural homogenization. Nevertheless, the worldwide scale migrations, with their extraordinary displacement of population of the periphery to the center, have put in judgment the cultural homogeneity of the national states. (Show less)