If social inequality results from discriminatory behaviors or policies based on membership in a race and ethnicity, as it certainly has in the U. S., should policy in a liberal society offer group-based benefits? The civil rights era answered positively. Identity politics, diversity rationales, and pressures for color-blind policy are challenging that answer. What and how we measure is in the middle of the argument.

Americans have always been divided over whether to welcome or to discourage immigration. But virtually all American leaders have rested their views on notions that the United States has unique providential or world-historical significance-as an asylum for the world's oppressed, as a model to the world, or even as the world's leader. Today, it is normatively desirable for the U.S. to view itself not as the world's “city on a hill” but simply as one worthy political society among many others. Whether such a view can be made politically appealing to most Americans, however, remains in doubt.

U.S. immigration policies history in the early 20th century has mostly been thought through the linear growing power of restrictionists versus liberals, resulting in 1917 Burnett law - containing the literacy test - and then 1921 and 1924 Quota laws. The latter has been described by scholars as the product of direct infuence of Eugenist activists (King) or of Eugenists mixed with Racists (Tichenor). Yet, the thorough study of the policy process permit to trace the origin of the quota laws in the mind of a key civil servant: William Walter Husband and in the activism of Sydney L. Gulick, a theology professor who spent his whole life searching for quelling American-Japanese relations. The latter conceived an immigration quotas plan whose aim was to give equal treatment to all ‘races’ and peoples. The Immigration Restriction League, had no other choice than to recognize Gulick’s large success in loobying his plan. Yet, in a last move, the IRL succeeded to maintain the exclusion of Asians in what became the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Far from Eugenist influence, this Act is the product of a battle between non racist and racist restrictionists upon the means and goals of immigration control. During years, they were permanently engaged into fierce political battles whose outcome had a significant impact on immigration restriction policies.

This article explores the elaboration of differences through the use of concepts of categories and policies with regard to the Other in France, Germany and the United States. It analyses three approaches in the definition of Otherness: The first one is interactive, that is the interaction between states and groups in search of political recognition. Through interactions one can measure the dynamics and the mechanisms of boundary construction and justify its legitimacy The second approach is normative. It is based on justice and equality as means of recognition. And the third approach is political. It is based both on empirical reality and normative perception and leads to institutional adjustments. All the three approaches come to show how explicitly or implicitly how an element of identity becomes a “permanent difference”, and is perceived ad the main source of cleavage in one society; and how this difference change from one society to another but also it switches over the time within one society.

In an increasingly diverse America, the experience of race and racial discrimination is too often described as if it is the same for all racial and ethnic groups. Utilizing the perspective on ethnic and racial groups developed by Zolberg that stresses their contingent and dynamic nature, we explore ethnic and racial discrimination in depth. Drawing on data from the New York Second Generation Study we describe the experience of prejudice and discrimination among eight groups of young adults-native born whites, native born blacks, native born Puerto Ricans, and second generation Dominicans, South Americans, Chinese, West Indians and Russian Jews. While the experience of racial discrimination is common to many Americans, the nature and severity of that experience varies widely among the increasingly diverse people that are now often lumped together as “minorities” in the popular imagination. African Americans, and those who most often confused with African Americans (such as West Indians and dark-skinned Latinos) have different kinds of experiences than other non white groups. They face more systematic and brighter racial boundaries than do Asians and light-skinned Latinos. This creates more formidable obstacles for those defined as black, as opposed to those who are just “nonwhite” to full incorporation into American society. We propose a typology of types of discrimination that begins to unpack this complex phenomena

The article explores contemporary immigrant politics in Boston, Massachusetts to understand the political coalitions behind the immigrant rights rallies held in the spring of 2006. Many scholars and activists have been anticipating the formation of a Black-brown coalition between African Americans and new immigrants. Were the 2006 rallies a manifestation of such an alliance in formation? While important coalitional work is being done in Boston by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and the Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Alliance, the Black-brown coalition is not the order of the day. Instead, our interviews and field work revealed the emergence of new linkages being forged between immigrant rights and gay rights advocates. Although by no means routinized into an enduring coalition, we suggest that this is the forefront of political change in which the politics of opposition is being re-imagined.

Taking Aristide Zolberg and Long Litt Woon's now classic article, “Why Islam is Like Spanish,” as its point of departure, this paper elaborates on the social boundary concepts introduced there and argues that these ideas offer new insight into the processes leading to fundamental ethno-racial change. The boundary concepts allow us to move beyond the static, one-directional concept of assimilation inherited from a previous era. They also help us to understand the conditions under which a majority group may tolerate the large-scale assimilation of minorities. These revised understandings alert us to the potential for boundary change that is entailed in coming demographic shifts, in particular the departure of the baby boom from the labor market in the U.S.

After describing the three European strategies focused on social control, this essay will first demonstrate that the first two strategies try less to protect societies than to enforce efficient tools of governance. Additionally, they reinforce stereotypes harming Muslim immigrants. I show that diverse approaches in policing can make a difference in the communities where police forces operate. The third strategy, that of prevention requiring the cooperation of the citizens, may be more sustainable in the long term as it facilitates communication among local politicians and involved actors. Finally, I point out that the interplay of interests, ideas and institutions matter a great deal to the comparison.

In this chapter I compare changes in immigrant integration policies in two European countries-France and Britain-with those of the United States. I focus first on the “national models” around which integration policies have been described, and then on the dynamics that are driving the changes and evolution of these models. I argue that national models in each country differentiate the direction, the content and the intensity of integration policy. These differences are most evident, moreover, if we examine not only the policies themselves, but the perceived success and failure of different integration policies. I argue that three dynamics have been driving the evolving management of integration policy: problems of urban order, the development of European union and perceptions of failure and success.

Recent work on transnationalism provides evidence to support the argument that transnational ties to the home country and integration into the host state are not mutually exclusive processes (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004). Moreover, connections to the home country attenuate over time and by the third generation immigrants are usually fully integrated into the receiving country. Given that some of the existing transnational ties are encouraged and facilitated by the home country, critics of sending states' diaspora engagement activities argue that their promotion of ongoing transborder connections limits immigrants' integration into the host state. The case of Mexico shows that there are stated and unstated objectives in the state's diaspora engagement policies, including the promotion of the government's political and economic interests, the need to maintain its legitimacy at home and abroad, and the interest in facilitating and securing remittance flows. But since the 1990s the programs developed by the Mexican government directed to migrants in the U.S. also seek to improve their living conditions in the host country. An issue that requires further exploration and is addressed in this paper is whether and how the services that Mexico provides to emigrants through its 50 consulates and the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME) contribute to or limit migrants' process of integration in the United States. Such services include, among others, preventive health care and medical referrals, adult education programs, and leadership development. This paper examines the effects of the Mexican government's programs on the integration of Mexican immigrants based on interviews in various U.S. cities. It also examines the response in the U.S. to the Mexican government’s active role in this regard.

This paper explores the recent debates over secularization and particularly the familiar claim that the United States is significantly more religious than European societies. It argues that that conclusion is essentially correct but also that it must be qualified in many ways.

In recent decades, cultural diversity in West European societies has, in terms of religions, languages, ethnic we-groups, transnational ties, and countries of origin, once more undergone immense growth. The argument advanced here is that while modes of incorporation such as assimilation and multiculturalism emphasize the social integration of migrants in the host societies on a national scale, the vague term diversity harbors innovative measures in two respects. Firstly, diversity not only addresses the incorporation of migrants, but also how the organizations of dominant society deal with cultural pluralism. Secondly, diversity can then be understood both as an individual competence of migrants as members of organizations, and as a set of programs which organizations adopt to address cultural pluralism. Yet if diversity is understood as going beyond a mere management technique, the question arises how social inequality can be dealt with. Existing approaches such as "boundary making" usually conflate characteristics of diversity with social inequality itself. One answer solution to this problem is a social mechanismic approach which traces the production of inequalities out of manifold markers of diversity. As an example, the analysis focuses on the intersection a new form of diversity, namely transnationality as a way of life, with other markers of heterogeneity.

We are really just at the beginning of analysing the connection between ethics, border management and migration policies. In this framework of the debate, I would like to propose a line of analysis centred, not so much what States do in the area of migration policies but rather theorize about the behaviour toward the demand for entry by people from other States. That is, how the States behave rather than what the States do in migration policies. This analysis implies entering into the field of applied ethics and taking a contextual approach. The construction of an ethical framework for the evaluation of decision-making represents a justified task in the current context of migration policies in Europe, and can contribute to the incipient debate on the Ethics of migration.

This article follows five sections. In the first section the debate on the Ethics of Migration especially that concerned with the normative debate on the control of borders is introduced. In the second section, the need for using an applied ethic for analysing migration policies is justified, and, in the third section, an “evaluative ethical framework” is finally proposed. In section four, this framework and the policy-maker's information resources are presented, and in section five, the resulting ethical approaches and orientations that follows are defended. Finally, in the concluding section, the article shows the different applications of the proposed framework, viable in both the area of public policy analysis and for empirical research.

In 1999 Germany passed a major reform of its citizenship laws, shaking off, however incompletely, its a century-old understanding of the German nation as based in blood. We examine this reform and especially the extended struggle that preceded it in order to better understand how international human rights norms come to play a role in the domestic politics of liberal democracies. Drawing on work in political sociology, international relations, and political theory, we argue that the power of human rights norms should not be measured in terms of their ability to coerce states into action, but rather as a political resource, a means by which the excluded and their advocates can confront existing legal arrangements and cultural understandings. In contrast to scholars who have attempted to trace the influence of global norms from the top down, we focus on moments of contentious politics in which claims are advanced through the language of human rights. We show that these moments played an important and hitherto underappreciated part in driving the extension of German citizenship to former “guest workers” and their descendants.

This piece is a first account of Aristide Zolberg's memoir in progress, Games of Identity, including a description of his luminous story of being a hidden child in Nazi-occupied Belgium.

This article is a reflection of Zolberg's influence on the author's intellectual life in relation to Africa, the social sciences, and university politics.

Based on an interview with Aristide and Vera Zolberg, the author reconstructs a partial narrative of Aristide's university life and reflects on the legacy of his generation of academics.

This article is a personal and professional meditation on Zolberg's work regarding pluralism, heterogeneity, and his relation to The New School, historically situated.

In an expression of extended thanks, Zolberg writes of the effects of his personal experience on his academic history. His academic practices of rejecting two widespread reductionisms - disciplinary boundaries and societal management of cultural diversity - are demonstratively formed through his personal experiences in academia, the Army, West Africa, and Europe, culminating in his comparative social science methods and politics.