Todd Gitlin

Bio: Todd Gitlin is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 221 citations.

The return of assimilation? Changing perspectives on immigration and its sequels in France, Germany, and the United States

Abstract: “The point about the melting pot,” wrote Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the preface to their influential Beyond the Melting Pot, “is that it did not happen.” This “failure to melt” thesis was iconoclastic when the book was published in 1963. But it had become widely accepted already by the end of the decade — well before the post-1965 revival of mass immigration began to transform the American urban landscape. By the 1980s, when the effects of the “new ‘new immigration’” had become unmistakable, earlier conceptions of assimilation seemed to many to have lost all relevance. When Glazer published We Are All Multiculturalists Now in 1997, he was writing as eminence grise, not as iconoclastic intellectual.1 Pluralistic understandings of persisting diversity, once a challenge to the conventional wisdom, had become the conventional wisdom, not only in the US and other classic countries of immigration such as Canada and Australia, but also in much of northern and western Europe.

Celebration and Suppression: The Strategic Uses of Identity by the Lesbian and Gay Movement.

Abstract: Critics of identity politics decry the celebration of difference within identity movements, yet many activists underscore their similarities to, rather than differences from, the majority. This article develops the idea of "identity deployment" as a form of strategic collective action. Thus one can ask under what political conditions are identities that celebrate or suppress differences deployed strategically. A comparison of strategies used in four lesbian and gay rights campaigns shows that interactions between social movement organizations, state actors, and the opposition determine the types of identities deployed. The author suggests the model's application to the Civil Rights and feminist movements. [The organizers of the 1993 lesbian and gay march on Washington] face a dilemma: how to put forward a set of unsettling demands for unconventional people in ways that will not make enemies of potential allies. They do so by playing down their differences before the media and the country while celebrating...

Culture in Interaction 1

Abstract: How does culture work in everyday settings? Current social research often theorizes culture as “collective representations”—vocabularies, symbols, or codes—that structure people’s abilities to think and act. Missing is an account of how groups use collective representations in everyday interaction. The authors use two ethnographic cases to develop a concept of “group style,” showing how implicit, culturally patterned styles of membership filter collective representations. The result is “culture in interaction,” which complements research in the sociology of emotion, neoinstitutionalism, the reproduction of inequality, and other work, by showing how groups put culture to use in everyday life.

Citizenship and Immigration: Multiculturalism, Assimilation, and Challenges to the Nation-State

Abstract: Citizenship encompasses legal status, rights, participation, and belonging. Traditionally anchored in a particular geographic and political community, citizenship evokes notions of national identity, sovereignty, and state control, but these relationships are challenged by the scope and diversity of international migration. This review considers normative and empirical debates over citizenship and bridges an informal divide between European and North American literatures. We focus on citizenship within nation-states by discussing ethnic versus civic citizenship, multiculturalism, and assimilation. Going beyond nation-state boundaries, we also look at transnational, postnational, and dual citizenships. Throughout, we identify methodological and theoretical challenges in this field, noting the need for a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding of the inter-relationships between the dimensions of citizenship and immigration.

Migration and Community Formation under Conditions of Globalization

Abstract: This article sets out to rethink the dynamics of the migratory process under conditions of globalization. Two main models of migration and incorporation dominated academic and policy approaches in the late twentieth century: first, the settler model, according to which immigrants gradually integrated into economic and social relations, re-united or formed families and eventually became assimilated into the host society (sometimes over two or three generations); second, the temporary migration model, according to which migrant workers stayed in the host country for a limited period, and maintained their affiliation with their country of origin. Globalization, defined as a proliferation of cross-border flows and transnational networks, has changed the context for migration. New technologies of communication and transport allow frequent and multi-directional flows of people, ideas and cultural symbols. The erosion of nation-state sovereignty and autonomy weakens systems of border-control and migrant assimilation. The result is the transformation of the material and cultural practices associated with migration and community formation, and the blurring of boundaries between different categories of migrants. These trends will be illustrated through case-studies of a number of Asian and European immigration countries. It is important to re-think our understanding of the migratory process, to understand new forms of mobility and incorporation, particularly the emergence of transnational communities, multiple identities and multi-layered citizenship.