Over the past two decades, scientific arguments for the influence of genes on illness, personality, intelligence, criminality, and many other characteristics have increased significantly. Yet, we know little about what the public thinks about these matters and the connections they draw between such ideas and politics.
The principal source of survey data on public opinion and political engagement is the American National Election Study (ANES). However, throughout its long history, the ANES sampling frame has consisted solely of eligible voters. Political scientists James McCann and Michael Jones-Correa have argued that this renders the archive much less useful for conducting research on immigrants, given that more than half of all foreign-born adults are not American citizens, and are thus barred from voting.
Over 4.5 million U.S.-born citizen children have at least one undocumented immigrant parent. In California alone, 13 percent of K–12 grade students have an undocumented parent. Many undocumented parents struggle in low-skill, low-wage jobs with onerous working conditions. They are likely to have low levels of educational attainment, high poverty rates, and limited access to services, as well as fear of deportation and familial separation—all of which can undermine their children’s wellbeing.
Findings: Attitudinal Policy Feedback and the Affordable Care Act; Julianna Pacheco, University of Iowa
Findings: Policy Making Politics? The Mass Political Impact of Medicaid Expansions; Joshua D. Clinton, Vanderbilt University, and Michael W. Sances, University of Memphis
Students from high-income families go to college at higher rates and are more likely to graduate than those from low-income families. This disparity has increased in recent decades. The factors that influence these post-secondary outcomes are varied, and include family circumstances (such as economic resources and family stability), school attributes (such as peer socioeconomic-status composition, teacher quality, and school resources), and neighborhood characteristics (such as crime orviolence).
Since 2008, 34 states have passed some form of voter identification law. Proponents of these laws claim that they are warranted because fraud is a real and potentially widespread phenomenon that could alter electoral outcomes and erode faith in democracy. Critics contend that these laws serve as a barrier that limits the legitimate participation of racial and ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups. To date, there is no conclusive evidence of the actual consequences of voter identification laws.
Books
Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity
Immigration and Belonging in North America and Western Europe
About This Book
Fifty years of large-scale immigration has brought significant ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to North America and Western Europe, but has also prompted hostile backlashes. In Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity, a distinguished multidisciplinary group of scholars examine whether and how immigrants and their offspring have been included in the prevailing national identity in the societies where they now live and to what extent they remain perpetual foreigners in the eyes of the long-established native-born. What specific social forces in each country account for the barriers immigrants and their children face, and how do anxieties about immigrant integration and national identity differ on the two sides of the Atlantic?
Western European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have witnessed a significant increase in Muslim immigrants, which has given rise to nativist groups that question their belonging. Contributors Thomas Faist and Christian Ulbricht discuss how German politicians have implicitly compared the purported “backward” values of Muslim immigrants with the German idea of Leitkultur, or a society that values civil liberties and human rights, reinforcing the symbolic exclusion of Muslim immigrants. Similarly, Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak find that in the Netherlands, the conception of citizenship has shifted to focus less on political rights and duties and more on cultural norms and values. In this context, Turkish and Moroccan Muslim immigrants face increasing pressure to adopt “Dutch” culture, yet are simultaneously portrayed as having regressive views on gender and sexuality that make them unable to assimilate.
Religion is less of a barrier to immigrants’ inclusion in the United States, where instead undocumented status drives much of the political and social marginalization of immigrants. As Mary C. Waters and Philip Kasinitz note, undocumented immigrants in the United States. are ineligible for the services and freedoms that citizens take for granted and often live in fear of detention and deportation. Yet, as Irene Bloemraad points out, Americans’ conception of national identity expanded to be more inclusive of immigrants and their children with political mobilization and changes in law, institutions, and culture in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Canadians’ views also dramatically expanded in recent decades, with multiculturalism now an important part of their national identity, in contrast to Europeans’ fear that diversity undermines national solidarity.
With immigration to North America and Western Europe a continuing reality, each region will have to confront anti-immigrant sentiments that create barriers for and threaten the inclusion of newcomers. Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity investigates the multifaceted connections among immigration, belonging, and citizenship, and provides new ways of thinking about national identity.
NANCY FONER is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
PATRICK SIMON is Director of Research at the Institut national d’études démographiques (National Institute for Demographic Studies).
CONTRIBUTORS: Irene Bloemraad, Jan Willem Duyvendak, Thomas Faist, Nancy Foner, Gary Gerstle, Philip Kasinitz, Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Deborah J. Schildkraut, Patrick Simon, Marieke Slootman, Varun Uberoi, Christian Ulbricht, Mary C. Waters
FM
Front Matter
Introduction
Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity: Immigration and Belonging in North America and Western Europe
Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity: Immigration and Belonging in North America and Western Europe
Nancy Foner and Patrick Simon
1
The Contradictory Character of American Nationality: A Historical Perspective
Gary Gerstle
2
Reimagining the Nation in a World of Migration: Legitimacy, Political Claims-Making, and Membership in Comparative Perspective
Irene Bloemraad
3
Does Becoming American Create a Better American? How Identity Attachments and Perceptions of Discrimination Affect Trust and Obligation
Deborah J. Schildkraut
4
The War on Crime and the War on Immigrants: Racial and Legal Exclusion in the Twenty-First-Century United States
Mary C. Waters and Philip Kasinitz
5
Feeling Dutch: The Culturalization and Emotionalization of Citizenship and Second-Generation Belonging in the Netherlands
Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak
7
Constituting National Identity Through Transnationality: Categorizations of Inequalities in German Integration Debates
Thomas Faist and Christian Ulbricht