Book•
Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe
01 Jan 1994-
TL;DR: Soysal et al. as mentioned in this paper compare the different ways European nations incorporate immigrants, how these policies evolved, and how they are influenced by international human rights discourse, and suggest a possible accommodation to these shifts: specifically, a model of post-national membership that derives its legitimacy from universal personhood, rather than national belonging.
Abstract: In many Western countries, rights that once belonged solely to citizens are being extended to immigrants, a trend that challenges the nature and basis of citizenship at a time when nation-states are fortifying their boundaries through restirictive border controls and expressions of nationalist ideologies. In this book, Yasemin Soysal compares the different ways European nations incorporate immigrants, how these policies evolved, and how they are influenced by international human rights discourse.
Soysal focuses on postwar international migration, paying particular attention to "guestworkers." Taking an in-depth look at France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, she identifies three major patterns that reflect the varying emphasis particular states place on individual versus corporate groups as the basis for incorporation. She finds that the global expansion and intensification of human rights discourse puts nation-states under increasing outside pressure to extend membership rights to aliens, resulting in an increasingly blurred line between citizen and noncitizen. Finally, she suggests a possible accommodation to these shifts: specifically, a model of post-national membership that derives its legitimacy from universal personhood, rather than national belonging.
This fresh approach to the study of citizenship, rights, and immigration will be invaluable to anyone involved in issues of human rights, international migration, and transnational cultural interactions, as well as to those who study the contemporary transformation of the nation-state, nationalism, and globalization.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the nation-state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics: (1) properties of nation-states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration; (2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states; (3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional
Abstract: The authors analyze the nation‐state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics: (1) properties of nation‐states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration; (2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states; (3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world‐level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional authority; (4) dynamic features of world culture and society that generate expansion, conflict, and change, especially the statelessness of world society, legitimation of multiple levels of rationalized actors, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions.
3,819 citations
25 Nov 2004
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reread Kant's cosmopolitan doctrine and the right to have rights and the contradictions of the nation-state in the case of the European Union, and the law of peoples, distributive justice and migrations.
Abstract: Introduction 1. On hospitality: rereading Kant's cosmopolitan doctrine 2. 'The right to have rights': Hannah Arendt and the contradictions of the nation-state 3. The law of peoples, distributive justice and migrations 4. Transformations of citizenship: the case of the European Union 5. Democratic iterations: the local, the national and the global Conclusion References Index.
1,547 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: The New Transnational Activism as mentioned in this paper shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space, and this emphasis on activism's relational structure means that transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links.
Abstract: The New Transnational Activism, first published in 2005, shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book.
1,360 citations
TL;DR: This article specifies how the ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending- country communities are remolded in receiving countries, the mechanisms by which they are sent back to sending communities, and the role they play in transforming sending-country social and political life.
Abstract: Many studies highlight the macro-level dissemination of global culture and institutions. This article focuses on social remittances--a local-level migration-driven form of cultural diffusion. Social remittances are the ideas behaviors identities and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending-country communities. The role that these resources play in promoting immigrant entrepreneurship community and family formation and political integration is widely acknowledged. This article specifies how these same ideas and practices are remolded in receiving countries the mechanisms by which they are sent back to sending communities and the role they play in transforming sending-country social and political life. The data concern migrants from the Dominican Republic to the Boston area of the United States. (EXCERPT)
1,300 citations
TL;DR: The authors examine the role of argumentative persuasion and social learning in compliance, and argue that domestic politics can help rationalists and constructivists to refine the scope of their compliance claims.
Abstract: Why do agents comply with the norms embedded in regimes and international institutions? Scholars have proposed two competing answers to this compliance puzzle, one rationalist, the other constructivist. Rationalists emphasize coercion, cost/benefit calculations, and material incentives; constructivists stress social learning, socialization, and social norms. Both schools, however, explain important aspects of compliance. To build a bridge between them, I examine the role of argumentative persuasion and social learning. This makes explicit the theory of social choice and interaction implicit in many constructivist compliance studies, and it broadens rationalist arguments about the instrumental and noninstrumental processes through which actors comply. I argue that domestic politics—in particular, institutional and historical contexts—delimit the causal role of persuasion/social learning, thus helping both rationalists and constructivists to refine the scope of their compliance claims. To assess the plausibility of these arguments, I examine why states comply with new citizenship/membership norms promoted by European regional organizations.
1,193 citations