The first decades of the new millennium have been marked by major political changes. Although The West has wished to revisit internal and international politics concerning migration policies, refugee status, integration, secularism, and the dismantling of communitarianism, events like the Syrian refugee crisis, the terrorist attacks in France in 2015-2016, and the economic crisis of 2008 have resurrected concepts such as national identity, integration, citizenship and re-shaping state policies in many developed countries. In France and Canada, more recent public elections have brought complex democratic political figures like Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau to the public eye. Both leaders were elected based on their promising political agendas that aimed at bringing their countries into the new millennium; Trudeau promotes multiculturalism, while Macron touts the diverse nation and the inclusion of diverse ethnic communities to the national model. This edited collection aims to establish a dialogue between these two countries and across disciplines in search of such discursive illustrations and opposing discourses. Analyzing the cultural and political tensions between minority groups and the state in light of political events that question ideas of citizenship and belonging to a multicultural nation, the chapters in this volume serve as a testimonial to the multiple views on the political and public perception of multicultural practices and their national and international applicability to our current geopolitical context.

This book explores migration experiences of African families across two generations in Britain, France and South Africa. Global processes of African migration are investigated, and the lived experiences of African migrants are explored in areas such as citizenship, belonging, intergenerational transmission, work and social mobility.

This book examines why Western European states have recently introduced citizenship tests, integration courses, contracts, and oath ceremonies. These requirements are perceived as instruments of civic integration, to enable immigrants to be better participants in society and the labor market. However, are all states introducing these requirements for the same reason?

In the decades since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States forces of cultural, economic, and political integration appear locked in battle with equally powerful forces of fragmentation. Globalization is facilitating unprecedented movement of goods, services, people, and ideas, while calls for building walls, erecting fences, and strengthening borders intensify. Tensions flare around claims of deeply rooted ethnic and civilizational identities—identities that are shaped and mobilized via sophisticated advances in technology. Women worldwide are achieving remarkable economic and political gains while sexual violence and gender inequalities persist and are fueled by rapid global change. This book explores the complex inter-relationship between globalization and belonging. In a hyper-modern, 21st-century world, questions and conflicts surrounding who ‘we’ are and who ‘we’ want to be predominate. This book links the politics of different forms of identification and attachment to the dynamics of an increasingly interconnected world.

Migration and Health: Critical Perspectives offers a radical rethinking of the field by unsettling conventional ideas of mobility and borders to highlight the ways in which they produce health inequalities. Covering a wide range of topics, the text provides insight through a critical lens, and proposes areas for intervention along with an added emphasis on the need for future research to address the health inequities that affect migrants. It illustrates how a critical perspective can deepen our understanding of the relationship between migration and health, which remains a defining global issue of our century. The text employs a critical approach to examine the structural conditions of inequality and larger historical and political processes, recognizing that exclusionary bordering practices increasingly occur away from physical points of entry. It posits the concept of migration as complex, tangled and multi-directional and underscores how migrant vulnerability can shape the lives of people in wider communities. Furthermore, it acknowledges diverse and intersectional standpoints, as well as shifting spatial and temporal influences. Chapters include coverage of health in transit; healthcare access and utilization; clinical encounters; communicable disease; labor and occupational health; gender and sexuality; immigration enforcement, detention, deportation; and the effects of forced displacement on refugee and asylum-seeker health. The text is useful for students and scholars of migration or health disparities seeking to understand how the two issues can be approached in a more holistic and critical way. It is further aimed at practitioners and policymakers who are interested in gaining familiarity with the structural conditions of inequality along with the larger historical and political processes that influence contemporary migration patterns.

In the past decade, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have formalised or introduced language and knowledge of society tests for immigrants applying for citizenship. The aim of this book is to assess the explicit and hidden goals these citizenship tests are meant to achieve, as well as to analyse their intended and unintended effects. The book answers the questions of why the countries under consideration introduced citizenship tests and what effects these tests have produced. The latter question has been answered on the basis of an analysis of relevant statistics and an analysis of interviews with immigrants and stakeholders. Furthermore, the content of the tests presented to (possible) future citizens of Germany, the Netherlands and the UK has been thoroughly analysed.

Immigration is continuously and rapidly changing the face of Western countries. While newcomers are harbingers of change, host nations also participate in how new populations are incorporated into their social and political fabric. Bringing together a transcontinental group of anthropologists, this book provides an in-depth look at the current processes of immigration, political behavior, and citizenship in both the United States and Europe. Essays draw on issues of race, national identity, religion, and more, while addressing questions, including: How should citizenship be defined? In what ways do immigrants use the political process to achieve group aims? And, how do adults and youth learn to become active participants in the public sphere? Among numerous case studies, examples include instances of racialized citizenship in “Algerian France,” Ireland’s new citizenship laws in response to asylum-seeking mothers, the role of Evangelical Christianity in creating a space for the construction of an identity that transcends state borders, and the Internet as one of the new public spheres for the expression of citizenship, be it local, national, or global.

Liberals believe that the purpose of politics is to guarantee that individuals do not face unfair impediments in pursuing the lives they choose for themselves. Nationalists believe that the purpose of politics is to ensure that a people's sense of authentic nationhood wins full expression in powers of collective sovereignty or self-rule. Both of these forms of political commitment yield world-transforming political philosophies, but do either of these visions do adequate justice to a philosophically robust ideal of shared citizenship and civic membership? In Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship, Ronald Beiner engages critically with a wide range of important political thinkers and current debates in light of the Aristotelean idea that shared citizenship is an essential human calling. Virtually every aspect of contemporary political experience - globalization, international migration, secessionist movements, the politics of multiculturalism - pose urgent challenges to modern citizenship. Beiner's work on the philosophy of citizenship is essential reading not just for students of politics and political philosophy, but for all those who rightly sense that these kinds of recent challen

Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-States in the Twenty-First Century contributes to the scholarship on citizenship and integration by examining belonging in an array of national settings and by demonstrating how nation-states continue to matter in citizenship analysis. Citizenship policies are positioned as state mechanisms that actively shape the integration outcomes and experiences of belonging for all who reside within the nation-state. This edited volume contributes an alternative to the promotion of post-national models of membership and emphasizes that the most fundamental facet of citizenship—a status of recognition in relationship to a nation-state—need not be left in the 'relic galleries' of an allegedly outdated political past. This collection offers a timely contribution, both theoretical and empirical, to understanding citizenship, nationalism, and belonging in contexts that feature not only rapid change but also levels of entrenchment in ideological and historical legacies.

Demonstrates how states at war redrew the boundaries between members and non-members, thus redefining belonging and the path to citizenship.