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277 chapter eig hteen Entering the Precincts of Power Do National Differences Matter for Immigrant Minority Political Representation? Richard Alba and Nancy Foner The 2005 riots in the French suburbs brought to the fore in a dramatic way our need to better understand how immigrants and their descendants are integrated into European societies and how European patterns compare with those that have developed in the United States. The riots also made clear the need to revisit comparative perspectives that have been prominent in the scholarly literature. Much of the comparative literature that looks at immigration in Europe and the United States has focused on the political sphere, particularly state policy regarding immigrants and immigration. A frequent concern is the question of convergence—whether parallel political, demographic, economic, social, and cultural forces are leading liberal democratic states in a common direction in the face of contemporary mass immigration. In some ways, we argue, the answer is yes. There is no denying a number of trends toward convergence, particularly when it comes to state policies in several key areas, most notably citizenship and the recognition of distinctive cultural practices. Yet a convergence view offers only a partial—and indeed a limited—picture. As has often been pointed out, important country-specific differences continue to shape the policy responses to immigration in Europe and North America. We are not yet living in a postnational world; it is too early to declare the end of historically rooted national distinctions (Howard 2005, 716; Judt 2005). But there is another problem that comes from putting so much emphasis on convergence , as many cross-national immigration studies do. Because convergence theorists (and, indeed, many other comparative analysts) focus so heavily on official government policies or on the representations of these policies in political discourse, they tend to tell a story of increasing immigrant inclusion. They risk missing, or at least seriously underplaying, the way historically rooted and durable social, political , and economic structures and arrangements create varying levels of barrier to immigrants and their descendants in different societies. In developing this argument, we take as our focus an aspect of the political arena that has to do with actual political practices—the ability of immigrant-origin 278 Richard Alba and Nancy Foner politicians to be elected to office. Surprisingly, this topic has received little attention in the literature on cross-national comparisons even though it is clearly critical for the integration of immigrants and their children—and indeed for their ability to influence the policies that shape their lives in such important ways. Our review of the evidence reveals some cross-national contrasts in the extent to which politicians from new immigrant groups have been able to gain elected office . Among the factors involved are the nature of the legal and electoral systems and party structures in each country, which create different kinds of opportunities and obstacles for electoral success. These political structures sometimes coincide with and sometimes depart from the different integration models of the societies, ranging from the multiculturalism of Britain to the assimilationist republicanism of France, which themselves constitute yet another factor that must be considered. We begin this chapter with a discussion of the arguments put forward for convergence as well as the limits of a convergence approach for understanding immigrant political incorporation, especially when it comes to the ability to get elected. With this as background, we discuss why we have chosen to focus on the issue of electoral success—why, in short, the election of co-ethnics matters for immigrant minority communities. We then examine how successful new immigrant groups actually have been in this endeavor in Europe and the United States, focusing on local and regional levels, where the first manifestations of success can be expected. We subsequently proceed to a discussion of the factors accounting for the differences, with an emphasis on long-standing structural features in different countries that are involved. In our conclusion, we discuss the implications of our analysis for the convergence approach. In the analysis, our focus is on five major countries of contemporary immigration : the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. All five have received huge numbers of immigrants in the post–World War II decades and represent a range of different national integration regimes and political systems. Admittedly , we are constrained by the availability of studies on the political representation of major immigrant populations. Nevertheless, the range of variation in integration models and in the legal and institutional structures among these...

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