Leo Lucassen, The Immigrant Threat. The integration of old and new migrants in Western Europe since 1850. University of Illinois Press 2005.
This book is the first volume of the new series Studies of World Migrations, edited by Donna R. Gabaccia and Leslie Page Moch.
Description of the book
In contrast to the U.S., migration scholars in Europe have never systematically explored the differences and similarities between the long term integration process of migrants in past and present. Focussing on large groups who were seen as threatening by the native population in France, Germany and the U.K., this book shows that there are a number of structural similarities in the way migrants and their descendants integrate into these nation states. Although the emergence of the welfare state and the revolutions in transport and communication have had an important impact on both migration and integration, these developments are not likely to fundamentally alter the long term intergenerational integration process. Moreover, the problematization of "large and threatening" groups of immigrants in the past, now past into oblivion, has more in common than most people realize. The "old" migrants (like the Irish in England, the Poles in Germany and the Italians in France) may have been from European stock, they were nevertheless perceived as essentially different and unfit to integrate. A discourse which echoes most of the fears and anxieties (for example on Muslim migrants) in present day Western Europe.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
List of tables and figures
Introduction
Part I Old Migrants
Chapter 1: The religious threat: Irish migrants in Britain (1840-1922)
Chapter 2: A threat to the nation: Poles in Germany (1870-1940)
Chapter 3: A threat to the native workers: Italians in France (1870-1940)Chapter 4: Old threats: conclusion and preview
Part II New Migrants
Chapter 5: The discomfort of color: Caribbean migrants in Great Britain (1948-2002)
Chapter 6: Turks in Germany: foreigners within? (1960-2002)
Chapter 7: Algerians in France: Islam and the colonial legacy (1945-2002)
Conclusion
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index