Negotiating Social Membership in the Contemporary World
One of the defining characteristics of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the increasing importance of international migration, an epoch Castles and Miller term the "age of migration." (2003) The precise size of the international migrant population is unknown. Much of this movement – such as unauthorized and other irregular flows – is not recorded in official statistics. Nonetheless, by all accounts international movements have soared in recent decades, especially since the 1970s, with the acceleration of cross-border flows of trade, investment, ideas and people – key features of globalization (Castles and Miller 2003). Worldwide, between 1965 and 2000, the number of migrants is estimated to have doubled, from 75 to 150 million (International Organization for Migration 2000).
As in the past, many of today's international migrants move toward areas of economic opportunity. From the mid-19th century until World War II, large flows left Europe for one of four settlement areas: North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. After World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the origin and direction of migration flows have expanded considerably and migration has become an increasingly important issue for sending and receiving countries. Today's migrants hail increasingly from developing regions and move toward multiple destinations in the developed world in search of economic opportunities, not only to the countries that have traditionally attracted large numbers of immigrants, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, but also in significant numbers to countries in Western Europe, the Persian Gulf, Japan and the fast-growing East Asian economies (Castles and Miller 2003). 1
The articles that comprise this special section of immigrant incorporation focus on how integration opportunities and constraints shape social membership among newcomer immigrant groups across a number of advanced industrial nations, including European countries, the United States and Canada. Social membership here refers to a set of basic social rights conferred on members of a society, including, for example, the right to work, the right to participate in political life, or the right to education. Social membership, however, is not always defined by the state and its institutions and can be expressed in informal but organized ways. The 2006 immigrant-led protests that swept across the United States exemplify how immigrants and the organizations and institutions who advocate on their behalf mobilize to demand rights – to claim social membership as a basis for legal status and inclusion.2
The integration of large numbers of newcomers coming from very different cultures poses enormous challenges to industrialized nations today, many of which are attempting to cope with their own domestic concerns, including the effects of liberalized trading policies on labor markets, increasing domestic inequalities, mounting racial and ethnic tensions, shrinking social safety nets and national security (Papademetriou 2003). Consequently, this increasing flow of immigrants has forced many countries to reevaluate their policies of admission and removal, as well as their allocation of rights and responsibilities to residents [End Page 631] and citizens alike. In this context, immigration issues have become the basis for popular expressions of frustration with domestic and international problems and are often highly politicized in the halls of government as flashpoints for issues of national security, transfer payments and basic criteria for naturalization.
Yet, the failure to integrate newcomers successfully can have enormous consequences that reach across generations. The 2005 civil unrest in poor first- and second-generation immigrant neighborhoods in France tragically illustrates how institutional characteristics, such as rigid labor market polices and discriminatory hiring practices can result in unsuccessful incorporation of immigrants and their children and disruption of the host society. 3 At the same time, more flexible labor markets can offer opportunities for economic growth and social mobility, as evidenced in the United States by the continued high rates of immigrant entrepreneurship and the movement of immigrant families into middle-class suburbs or, as Frey terms them, "melting class...
