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Negotiations beyond Borders: States and Immigrants in Europe

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Negotiations beyond Borders: States and Immigrants in Europe


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[[Reprinted from The Journal of Interdisciplinary History , XLI (2010), 79-96, with the permission of the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History and The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, copyright 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.]]

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Since the 1990s studies on immigration in Europe have focused extensively on a comparative state policy with regard to integration and citizenship [1] . Lately debates on politics of recognition as a principle of democratic incorporation led to the question of multiculturalism and identity politics in different democratic states. Just as the principle of citizenship, public recognition and representation of differences challenges democratic states’ approach to diversity and equal citizenship. These new developments counter the dichotomist view opposing assimilation (and/or integration) and multiculturalism, and leads to convergent policies founded on negotiations of identities between states and immigrants as a new path to a new “historical compromise” as formulated by Ch. Taylor. Negotiations as a result of intensives interactions between states and their immigrants mean for individual and groups to claim recognition as citizen, through which the attachment and loyalty to both national community and to an ethnic community are expressed.For states, negotiations imply to find new waves to incorporate immigrants into the political community and national institutions [2] .

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All these statements, despite the convergences, show that the question of immigration and integration is within the exclusive power of the state. States control their borders by defining policies of entry—explicitly by using quotas or by targeting the country through bilateral agreements as was the case with most of the European countries after the 1960, or implicitly by refusing some entries. States define policies of integration in order to maintain the national integrity and to insure social harmony. States establish laws of citizenship and the rules of political participation of immigrants. As for immigrants’ choice, the nature of the state as well as the relationship between the sending and receiving countries play an important role in the final decisions.

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But states face new developments and dynamics that affect their relationship with immigrants within their boundaries and beyond. In Europe, more specifically in the European Union defined by the Single European Act of 1986 as a “space without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, of property and capital is safeguarded”, the Schengen agreement that led to the Treaty of Amsterdam introduced “visas, asylum, immigration and other policies related to free movement of persons”. Finally the Treaty of Lisbon reformulates the Schengen agreement and brings in “policies on border checks, asylum and immigration”.Thus, states coordinate their policy of immigration and cooperate to protect a common border from flows of immigration [3] . In this perspective, issues like incorporation of immigrants into each state on the one hand, the political construction of the European Union on the other have urged the reflection upon the limits of the states in their relationship with immigrants on their territory and beyond.

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Parallel to these changes, immigrants with the status of permanent residents or legal citizens of one state, foster solidarity networks across national borders on the grounds of one or several identities, linking the home country to the country of residence and in the case of the European union to a broader European space. Such transnational organizations seek recognition from supranational institutions as loci of collective identity.The emergence of transnational associations underscores the development of multiple trans-spatial interactions: between national societies (both home and host); between national and supranational institutions; and among member-states of the European Union [4] . Such transnational organizations create a space for political participation that goes beyond national territories and the multi-level interactions they imply create common social, cultural economic and political involvement of immigrants. Political participation in more then one political community, which brings to light multiple membership and to some extent multiple loyalties crystallized around dual citizenship becomes for immigrants a way to maintain an identity rooted in the home country. Citizenship becomes then an entitlement within the country of residence. For home states this means to maintain a link with citizens “abroad” and among them; it involves at the same time the extension of its power beyond its territories.

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These transformations reshape the nature and the scope of negotiations between states and immigrants. The extension of solidarities beyond national boundaries of both home country and immigration country and its expression on a transnational space challenges states’ singular power and action on immigration and incorporation. This article will attempt to show that in this new configuration, negotiations between states and immigrants are brought beyond borders in order for states to maintain the “power” of incorporation and citizenship while expanding their influence beyond their territories and compete with transnational communities in their engagement of the process of globalization through economy and culture.

Europe and its Immigrants


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Studies on immigration in different European countries show that despite differences in history with regard to immigration, to ideology, and modes of incorporation of immigrants, they are all facing issues related to immigration and integration of immigrants. For some countries this experience goes back to the mid 19th century like for France for example where historical studies have shown that immigration always appeared primarily as a response to a demographic problem combined with a demand of the labor market and of economic expansion.By the end of the nineteenth century, foreigners represented 3% of the total population, a proportion that doubled in twenty-five years [5] . Other European countries such as Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands have been considered for a long time as countries of emigration; individuals from these countries have migrated to the new World in the 19th and 20the centuries looking for new economic opportunities. After the WWII and more specifically, in the 1950s and the 1960s all European countries competed for a cheap labor to rebuild their economy and their society after years of destruction.

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The colonial past combined with the economic need designed the trajectories of immigrants in France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands. North Africans’ migration in France followed the massive arrival of Italians between the two wars and was followed by an influx from the Iberian Peninsula starting in the 1950s. Great Britain received migrants from former colonies of the British empire—such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Carribeans, Soth Africa, Kenya, Hong Kong. Many people have migrated to the Netherlands, in particular from Indonesia, from Surinam, from the Netherlands Antilles, after their decolonization in the 1970s. Immigration in Germany on the other hand is mainly the result of an employment policy. Despite some arguments that want to emphasize demographic reasons, studies show that immigration was to fulfil lacunas in the labor market.After World War II, the appeal to the foreign manpower essential for economic reconstruction aimed at the eastern Mediterranean, at Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and Turkey [6] .

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But colonial ties are no longer a determinant factor. Increasing mobility, standardized social relations, convergent politics of immigration and globalized markets generate a sort of geographical and historical indifference: Algerians are not only in France, Indians and Pakistanis are not only in Great Britain. Constructed networks driven by market and social opportunities in different countries have replaced the colonial ties that had led immigrants in their choice of a trajectory. Refugees under the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 have come to Great Britain. After 2004 immigrants from member states of the European Union, mainly from Central and Eastern European states as the effects of the enlargement, have also chosen massively Great Britain,. In Belgium Italians are the most numerous of the foreigners legally residing in Belgium the Moroccans are the second largest group, followed by the Turks, Spanish, etc.[7] Today, foreign population constitutes in average 8% of the total population of these countries in Europe.The French national institute of statistics INSEE estimated in 2006 that 4.9 million foreign-born immigrants live in France [8] .In Great Britain, in 2004, 8.3 percent of the population at the time - were born abroad, although the census gives no indication of their immigration status or intended length of stay [9] . In Germany at the end of 2002, 7.3 million foreigners ( Ausländer ) were living in Germany. Their number amounts to approximately 8.9% of the population as a whole. Other countries like Italy, Spain, Greece known as sending countries within Europe until the 1970s even 1980s are now experiencing immigration and settlement of immigrants from Africa and Asia or Latin America as in the case of Spain.

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The 1980s constitute a turning point in the relationship between states and immigrants. By then it had become obvious in the eyes of public authorities, policy makers and public opinion that immigrants considered as provisory are “here to stay”. Economic and colonial migration turned into a permanent settlement and came along with new narratives on the nature of the state, of the nation, of the society and of rights. The term “multiculturalism” marks in this context the shift from temporary economic immigration to the permanent settlement of immigrant populations and their political participations. Policies followed narratives. From the state perspective, this implies the extension of the welfare state to a new realm—that of immigration and identity—with the establishment of social policies to guarantee integration in the larger society. In Germany, the city of Frankfurt has created a sector of “Multicultural Affairs” whose head, also the deputy mayor Daniel Cohn-Bendit is advocating a “multicultural democracy” inspired by Rousseau’s social contract. In France, too, during the same period, the media as a political class described French society as “multiracial,” “multicultural,” “plural,” “pluri-cultural.” This terminology found legitimacy in a political discourse that privileged “the right to difference” established in 1981. In Great Britain, the Commission for Racial Equality promulgated as early as in 1976 the Race Relations Act. The main objectives were to fight against racism, to eliminate discrimination, and to assure an equality of opportunity and thus establish good relations among different racial groups.In the Netherlands with a “Draft Minorities Report” (1981) and later in the “Minorities Report” (1983) too, the government expressed its wish to elaborate a minority policy with the participation of the immigrants involved [10] . Thus an explicit minority policy declared the objective of “promoting multiculturalism and the emancipation of ethnic communities.”

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Indeed, since the 1980’s in many European countries, governments have started to support so-called immigrant associations, as long as their activities come within the framework of “integration policies”. In France, in October 1981, the liberalization of the law concerning the creation of voluntary associations allowed the foreigners to create their own organization. Spontaneous gathering based on interpersonal relations in concentrated areas found therefore an institutional and formal structure through associations. In Germany, during those same years, as a result of synchronized imitation or political contagion, Turkish associations appeared on the public stage. Associations regulated by a 1964 law stipulate that “any group, even of foreigners, can associate legally on condition of not disturbing the public order or the economic interests of the Federal Republic”.

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Within these associations individuals of the same national, regional, ethnic or religious origin form a collective identity, distinguish frontiers, create new bonds of solidarity and finally learn the political and “rules of the game” that positions them vis-a-vis the state. Discourse alternates with action and these community-oriented organizations appear increasingly as a refuge and at times even a sanctuary where culture, religion, the nation and ethnicity are interpreted and solidified in order to face the state and negotiate each of these elements with public authorities. Such a redefinition of identities finds legitimacy in an identity consciousness that is largely fuelled by public debates and reinforced by local and/or national targeted policies. This simple conscious-raising of cultural differences has quickly transformed into political action when it is accompanied by demands from the state to recognize these differences. Consequently, their creation is based on an obvious dual objective because it aims to develop a collective conscience and at the same time integrate the immigrant populations into state structures.

Citizenship and ….


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Politics of integration and the mobilization of immigrants brought the question of citizenship at the core of the studies on immigration and incorporation. Te concept of citizenship is defined above all by membership to a political community. This membership takes shape through rights (social, political, and cultural) and duties that are embodied in the very concept of citizenship. Its implementation by law implies the integration or the incorporation of the “foreigner” into the national community with which he or she is supposed to share the same moral and political values. Moreover, she and he is supposed to adopt or even to “appropriate” historical references as a proof of belonging and loyalty to the founding principles of the nation.

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Debates on citizenship and nationhood reveal precisely such expectations. They refer therefore to the formation of the nation-state, to its political traditions and its identity. Such perspective had opposed French and German understanding of citizenship, considered as two republics with two different histories and each of them representing different political traditions. France is represented as the ideal type of a nation-state and perceives itself as universalistic because of its egalitarian principals based on a “national assimilation” and is opposed to Germany considered as “exclusivist”. While French public discourse has always emphasized on the elective and political understanding of the nation, the German nation has been defined as a cultural and ethnic unity based on common descent as a sign of belonging.Such representations have found a ground on the laws of access to citizenship that have privileged jus solis in France and jus sanguinis in Germany [11] .

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The experience of immigration and settlement along with the claim of equality and recognition as citizens have both changed the understanding of and the laws on citizenship, by balancing the part of ancestry and birth, that is blood and soil in both countries, reversing in some ways the understanding of immigration and citizenship in France and Germany.Indeed, according to recent citizenship laws in France, a child born from foreign parents can be French at the age of 16 [12] , whereas in Germany, to start in January 2000 a child born in Germany is automatically German if one of the parents was born in Germany or residing with no interruption for the last eight years [13] .

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Obviously the politics of citizenship and naturalization laws affect the political participation and collective or even individual strategies of immigrants. In France and Germany for example, immigrants develop different tools and elaborate different strategies for political participation.In France, where access to citizenship based on relatively easy naturalization and the practice of jus solis for the young generation immigrants lead to a direct participation where they can act as a electoral force, whereas in Germany where restricted citizenship laws until the year 2000 [14] , and the on going interdiction of dual citizenship—demanded by Turkish immigrants has led activists to develop “compensatory” strategies. Such strategies entail a search for indirect participation that implies a participation in the civil society such as mobilization within voluntary associations as a way to assert a collective presence and claim that would affect the public opinion and political decisions on their behalf. Such “compensation strategies” developed by militants do not exclude integration. On the contrary, they lead to a search for indirect methods to achieve it. The lack of electoral influence is compensated at the local level by a form of citizenship that stems from its social practice and that is defined by the creation of groups of foreigners whose task is to find their place with regards to the federal government. Debates on foreigners’ right to vote in local elections in Germany but also in France when foreign electorate was debated in the local elections of 1989 and of 1996, the nomination of spokesmen to represent them, a demand for equal rights for all in almost all European countries shows the importance of their political participation.

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Citizenship becomes then an identity that is developed through direct or indirect participation, in the name of shared interest for individuals and groups, immigrants or not. In both cases political participation comes out as the extension of community action. It places the very concept of citizenship at the antipodes of exclusion, which highlights its social aspect while maintaining its political and legal aspects. In the 19th century however, citizenship has been extended to different domain such as education, health and welfare.Right after the Second World War, the British sociologist T.H.Marshall reconsidered citizenship in terms of social class, adding to its political and legal content a social approach to the concept of right and equality [15] . According to Marshall, citizenship as social rights follows political rights.As far as immigrant populations in Europe are concerned their social rights precedes their political rights [16] . As a matter of fact, immigrants are settled in a “social citizenship” at their arrival, at the same time that their integration into the labor market, with equal access to social rights and equal protection from the Constitution with regard to Human Rights.

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Thus the practice of citizenship goes beyond its legal definition. It stems from the political engagement of the individual, and is applied to different domain of and in different terms. It is expressed in terms of participation in the public space. It can be practiced within a cultural, ethnic or religious community, as well as within the national community. Such multiple identifications and allegiances that result from political participation raise the question of belonging and loyalty of individual to the national community. It has even become a source of “suspicion” for nation-states, a feeling that comes out in every discussion or public debate on citizenship and nationhood, and instrumentalized by extreme right parties in different European countries. As a matter of fact, since the 1980s the scope of the debates on citizenship related to immigration in Europe translate undoubtedly the apprehension of the political class and the public opinion to see citizenship depreciated or “desacralized”, based on the argument that the “immigrant” or “foreigner” expresses his or her attachment to the country of origin, and therefore to “primordial ties” with a transposed cultural community instead of with the political community the country of the settlement, opposing this way the Republican understanding of membership as defended by the called “Frenc model”.

…and recognition


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Whatever the discourse or the practice, whatever the definition of a minority, or citizenship, gradually all European countries have converged in a sort of “applied multiculturalism”, linking the question of citizenship to recognition [17] .Whether citizenship is political, judicial, social, or economic and its content identity-based, cultural or legal, this combination boils down to a sense of loyalty directed at once towards the group, the community, civil society and the state. The demand for recognition allows groups that claim a specific identity to emerge from the political sidelines and fully integrate the structures of the state. Today in France, in Germany, in Great Britain, the recognition of a collective identity concerns specifically Islam.

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In France, since the 1990’s, the actions by local authorities towards populations of North African origin have been guided by the “fear of Islam”. At the same time, the debates over the issue of citizenship that want to emphasize on an “incompatibility” between a “republican citizenship”, secular ( laic ) and individual and attachment to another religious, national, and ethnic identity and the incompatibility between the Islam and secularism ( laicité ) put Islam, the religion of the North African population in France, at the center of demands for its recognition. The mobilization of the political class around the controversy over students wearing the Islamic scarf to school (first in 1989 and then in 1994) in the name of laicité —French secularism—, considered to be the pillar of social cohesion, led to making religion —Islam—the key to the collective identification of North African immigrants, making of Islam, with the proliferation of associations, an agent in the discourse of action or reaction. Even the so-called secular associations integrated into their activities the celebration of Islamic holidays, like Ramadan and animal sacrifice. Although the state officially does not support religious organizations, state funding for public service and community groups that incorporated Islamic identity and culture into their activities indirectly gave greater public value to religious organizations in the eyes of the Muslim population. From comprising only one component of culture in early secular associations, Islam has now come to signify culture in its entirety and has become another way of “reappropriating” identity.

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In Germany the demand for recognition has to do with the status of an ethnic minority based at the same time on a Turkish national identity and a Muslim religious identity, two elements considered as “foreign” to German collective identity. The national minority defines itself by its legal status as foreign, while the religious minority defines itself by the marginalization of Islam compared with the other religions that benefit from their official status. The demands by Turks for dual citizenship introduce clear distinctions between nationality, citizenship, and identity.In 1998, when the laws concerning access to German nationality were debated, not coincidentally, the case of a naturalized German teacher of Afghan origin who wore a headscarf at work as a civil servant in the Land of Baden-Württemberg, upset German public authorities just as much as the wearing of headscarves by students had in France [18] .

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Since then there have been many public debates in Germany about the function of civil servants and the wearing of the headscarf, mainly by teachers. Cases in Germany have been brought to the courts, whose decisions can vary from one Land to another. In some cases the arguments are focused on the competence and skill of the teachers and in other cases on public education and the diffusion of Western education and norms. This debate must be seen as related to debates over citizenship and the inclusion of the “foreign minority” into the political community and civil society. Therefore recognition by public authorities of a “Muslim community” was broadly proclaimed in reference to the integration Turkish immigrants into German society.

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Debates and arguments on religion, focus on the relationship between church and state in order to interpret and acknowledge diversity with regard to Muslim immigration in Europe. The settlement of the Muslims who are demanding recognition and representation for Islam within national institutions and societies tests the principle of secularism in the context of the emergence of multiculturalism expressed in terms of religion. Islam has become a challenge to the question of equality (social and cultural), racism, recognition (institutional and cultural) in all European countries.

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The recognition of Islam challenges secularist European states, its non recognition challenges the equal inclusion of differences. In order to resolve the conflicts that Islam brings to secularisms that have emerged in the public space and the political community, leading liberal democratic societies respond to institutional pressures that is either to reshape its institutions so as to provide for the general recognition of Islam or, as Biku Parekh suggests, to extend these institutions to include the newly emerging Islam in European societies.Its legitimacy stems from equal representation of religions in liberal democratic societies, to promote at the same time a common membership and a common civic culture allowing citizens to find adequate identification [19] .

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In France, the separation between Church and State grants institutional judicial statutes to the Catholic clergy, to the Protestants of the National Federation of Protestant Churches of France, as well as to Jews governed by the Consistory created by Napoleon. Such “recognition” is based on the argument of respect for the freedom of religion and the neutrality of the secular State. The recognition of Islam led to a repositioning of the different religions in the public space.Finally on April 16th, 2003 Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded in creating a French Council of the Muslim Faith (Conseil Français du Culte Musulman) which elected its first national representative [20] .

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In Germany, recognition has also raised questions about the place of Islam, but in public instruction, just as with the Christian faiths [21] . The Islamic Federation of Berlin, hoping to gather all Muslim associations in the Land of Berlin, asked for recognition as Religionsgemeischaft in 1980, and this status was finally given to them in 2000.After twenty years of fighting for representation, the federation obtained the authorization for Islamic instruction in Berlin in 2001 [22] .

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In Great Britain, the targeted discrimination today has led sociologists to claim the inclusion of religion—Islam—in ethnic and racial policy and its consideration by anti-discrimination laws [23] . The Race Relations Act (1976) has established the color (Black and White) as the locus of race and racism, of racial and ethnic categorization. Although the Rushdie affair in Britain like the scarf affair in France (by coincidence, the first scarf affair in France occurred in November 1989, right after the Rushdie affair in Britain) has brought Islam at the core of a collective identification of migrants with Asian background. According to Modood, Muslims are not considered as an ethnic group by the anti-discrimination law, although religion is much more central to British Asian ethnicity, and the political indifference to Muslim or rather their exclusion from ethnic and racial policy, “disproportionably disadvantages them and has marginalized them from the public debate”.

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An institutional recognition maintains both the role of the state as a legitimate source of power, and as a legal and democratic guarantor of equal representation and citizenship. This approach therefore emphasizes historical continuity and the importance of context in either a descriptive or normative analysis of identities. Asking for recognition as a minority allows a group that declares a specific identity to emerge from their political marginality and thus express a struggle for liberation.A national identification or an “institutional assimilation” through representation and political recognition can help to “liberate” Muslim population in Europe from external political forces of the home country and transnational networks and to push them to participate fully in the political community [24] .

Transnational Integration


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The international dimension of ethno-religious identification has been analyzed by Herbert Gans as a component of what he calls “symbolic ethnicity,” defined as an ethnicity of last resort [25] . In politics, such ethnic identification is expressed through international preoccupations, especially concerning the country of origin. Since the 1990s, studies on the international preoccupation of post-colonial immigration have focused on the emergence of transnational communities: that is individual, commercial, institutional (political, cultural and social) relations that immigrants entertain in the two countries.Operating on two countries gives rise to new practices and symbols [26] . In most of the cases, transnational communities are built on common geographical, cultural and political references, hence its relative homogeneity as well as the intensity of intra-communal relations and the efficiency in their action.

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The emergence of transnational communities is a “global phenomenon”. Groups and/ or institutions are involved in structuring networks based on economic interests, cultural exchanges, social relations and political mobilizations. Increasing mobility and the development of communication have contributed to intensify such transborder relations through constructed networks and organized communities.The institutionalization of a transnational community requires a coordination of activities based most of the time on common references—objective or subjective—and common interest among members; a coordination of resources, information and sites of social power across national borders for political, cultural, economic, technological and social purposes [27] .

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In the European Union, transnational communities may transcend the boundaries of the member states, relating a vast European space to the country of origin. Some of the transnational networks are based on local initiatives, some come from the country of origin, some are encouraged by supranational institutions. In 1986, the European Parliament mobilized resources for immigrants’ voluntary associations in order to help them to coordinate their activities with the creation of a transnational European organization called The Forum of Migrants . Dissolved in 2001, the Forum had initiated however a transnational structure, a sort of European federation of immigrants associations. The declared objective of the Forum was to create “a place where immigrants from non-European countries can express their claims, but also a place through which they can share their demands, but also circulate information concerning them from European authorities.” According to the president of the Forum (related to the Commission in Brussels) “the objective is to obtain for non-Europeans third countries’ nationals settled in member states, the same rights and opportunities than the ‘authoctone’ citizens of the Union, and compensate a democratic deficit”. The explicit goal is to fight against racism with a common jurisdiction in different European countries.

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Guided by the logic of regulation and of political and juridical harmonization which they impose on nation-states, European supranational institutions had encouraged immigrants to define a common platform to the network, and helped the actors to find a common denominator to deal with claims at a European level, that is beyond the relations with the nation-states. They played this way an important role in the diffusion of social, cultural, political and even juridical norms in different European countries as well as in the country of origin. Initiatives on all levels help activists develop political strategies and mobilization beyond states.

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For immigrants, participation in such transnational organization clearly reveals multiple references and allegiances: to the host country, to the home country, to the transnational community that is being constructed and to Europe. Whether immigrants are citizens or not their loyalty to the host country comes from sharing the values and contributing to its social and political institutions. The home country, despite its cultural and ethnic heterogeneity, provides emotional support and identity resources. A transnational community combining ties both host and home country represents a new reference of involvement that gives rise to the formation of a transnational identity as inspiration for political action and as an instrument for cultural and religious purposes beyond national borders.

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Religious associations use the European space in the same way as the cultural and social associations but do not get—in the name of secularism—any support either by national or by supranational institutions. Even though the political identity of Muslim immigrants has been shaped and developed primarily according to their specific relations with each state, the international agenda for Muslims is expressed through transnational networks throughout Europe and beyond. Their scope is broad and expansive with regard to nationality of origin, regional identity, and even denominations. Sometimes, their agenda calls for a collective identification with the Muslim in Europe and/or Muslims in the world in general. Representatives of such associations work mainly in connection with the home countries or with the help of international organizations, or both. The home countries try to rally their nationals to achieve recognition of their (extra-community) country from the European authorities. Thus they re-activate their loyalties through religion and contribute to the creation of a “transnational community.” The international organizations interested in Islam in Europe mobilize resources to allow Islam to go beyond the national diversity of Moslems living in the various countries of the Union, to create a single religious identification and a transnational solidarity based on that. From this perspective, Islam has provided a basis for trans-state and transnational organization, with the common identification and experience of being Muslim in Europe. For post-colonial immigrants, fragmented from within by various home and host national identities and denominations, Islam represents a unifying identity for asserting collective interest and structuring a transnational community which transcends the boundaries of member-states. Therefore the internal diversity to the transnational community is “recentered” also around norms and values diffused by European supranational institutions and through the process by which these same institutions give the diversity a legitimacy on the international stage, especially via an inclusive discourse developed by transnational activists founded on human rights, the fight against racism or any other form of social, political and cultural exclusion.

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As with social and cultural networks, the strategy aims at the recognition of identities that are primarily national and ethnic. Despite the influence of the home countries or international organizations that endow them with political importance, their claims are adapted to the European context. But they also raise a question of representation in European institutions, especially since the European Convention of Human Rights recognizes freedom of religion. Article 9 of the European Court of Human rights states that, “every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. This right implies the freedom to have or adopt a religion or conviction of one’s choice, as well as the freedom to demonstrate one’s religion or conviction, individually or collectively, in public or in private, through worship and instruction, including the practice and performance of rituals.”

To conclude


6.1 
Transnational networks have introduced a new mode of participation. Obviously transnational networks represent a political participation beyond the nation-state with different levels and areas of citizenship rights and identifications. A transnational organization allows the immigrant populations to escape national policies. But at the same time, transnational networks linking the country of origin to the country of residence and promoting participation in both spaces, challenge the single allegiance required by membership to a political community represented by one nation and consolidated by one state. It brings to light multiple membership and multiple loyalties.

6.2 
Transnationalism leads, in any case, to an institutional expression of multiple belonging, where the country of origin becomes a source of identity and the country of residence a source of right and the emerging transnational space, a space of political action combining the two or more countries. This multiplicity is institutionalized by dual citizenship. Home states, by keeping dual-citizenship or introducing in their civil law because of the increasing number of their citizens abroad, most states use their sovereignty beyond their territorial setting. From the states’ point of view, this involves the extension of its power beyond its territories. On the other hand it implies also either negotiating the means of including transnational strategies in their own national political strategies in order to maintain the bonds and loyalty of individual citizens abroad.

6.3 
Transnational organizations appear more and more as a crucial structure in order to negotiate the claimed and recognized identities and states within their boundaries and beyond. Here is the paradox of transnationality. The consolidation of a transnational solidarity generally aims to influence the state from outside. Even if transnational networks contribute to the formation of “external communities”, out of their relationship with states, these networks today are imposed on the states as indispensable structures for negotiation of collective identities and interest with the national public authorities which define the limits of their legitimacy. The objectives of transnational networks are to reinforce their representation at the European level, but their practical goal is recognition at the national level. In addition, activists, even the most active ones at the European level, see states as their only “adversary.”

6.4 
In other words, the ultimate goal is to reach a political representation that can only be defined at the national level. Rights and interests for non-European residents and citizens—for housing, employment, family reunification, mobilization against expulsion and other government programs and policies related to identity—can only be claimed from the state. But all claims at the national level imply a parallel pressure at the European level and, conversely, all claims on the European level aim to have an impact on decisions taken at the national level within each of the member states. For the Muslim populations in Europe, a transnational organization of interests which employs identity in order to win recognition at the European level reflects the Europeanization of political action, but it does not involve the Europeanization of demands. The latter remain linked to the state, the body which remains the only solid framework of reference for mobilization and negotiations.

Footnotes


Note 1
R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1992.


Note 2
R.Kastoryano, Negotiating Identities. States and Immigrants in France and Germany , Princeton, Princeton U. Press, 2002.


Note 3
Didier Bigo, Didier Bigo. Police en réseaux . Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1995.


Note 4
R. Kastoryano, "Transnational Networks and Political Participation. The Place of Immigrants in the European Union", in M.Berezin et M.Schain (eds.), Europe Without Borders. Remapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age , Johns Hopkins U. Press 2003, pp. 64–89.


Note 5
For France, see Y. Lequin, La Mosaïque France , op.cit. , 1988; G. Noirel, Le creuset française. Histoire d’immigration, XIXe et Xxe siècle , Paris, éd. du Seuil, 1988; M. Tribalat, Cent ans d’immigration en France, Paris, PUF, 1989. For Germany, the best-known historical works are by K. Bade; and see U. Herbert, Geshichte der Ausländerbeschäfigung in Deutschland 1880–1980. Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter, Berlin, Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf, 1986.


Note 6
Recruitment began as early as 1955 after the first agreement between the Italian and West German governments. Similar agreements with Greece and Spain (1960), Turkey (1961), Marocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and Yugoslavia (1968) followed. for different phases of immigration of ethnic Germans to Germany, R.Münz and R.Ulrich, Germany and its Immigrants: A Socio-demographic Analysis, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , January 1998, Vol.24, no:1, pp.25–56.


Note 7
see Marco Martiniello and Andrea Rea, Belgium’s Immigration Policy Brings Renewal and Challenges, in Migration Policy Institute , October 2003.


Note 8
According to the last statistics of INSEE, 8% of the country’s population les immigrés selon leur pays de naissance en 1999 et 2004–2005 .


Note 9
Statistics Online, 24 October 2006.


Note 10
Jan Rath, CEMOTI, no 1.


Note 11
cf.W.R.Brubaker, op.cit. , 1992; L.Dumont, L’idéologie allemande. France-Allemagne et retour , Ed. Gallimard, Paris 1991.


Note 12
P. Weil, Qu’est-ce qu’un Français? Histoire e la nationalité française depuis la Révolution , Paris, Grasset, 2002 (Translation : How to be French , Duke U. Press, 2009).


Note 13
Under transitional arrangements in the 1999 reforms (effective in January 1, 2000), children who were born in Germany in 1990 or later, and would have been German had the law change been in force at the time, were entitled to be naturalised as German citizens. The child was required to apply for retention of German citizenship by age 23 and normally show that no other foreign citizenship was held at that time. The dual citizenship is stil rejected.


Note 14
In the year 1999, 103 900 and in 2000 82 861 Turks have been naturalized in Germany, by reaching the highest rate of naturalization.


Note 15
T.H.Marshall, Class, Citzenship and Social Development  ; The University of Chicago Press, 1964 (première édition).


Note 16
Y. Soysal notices the reverse phenomenon between social and political rights of immigrants in western Europe; in Limits of Citizenship , U.of Chicago Press 1994.


Note 17
cf.Ch.Taylor, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition , Princeton University Press, 1992.


Note 18
“Scarf affairs” in different Lands, have been discussed and judged in terms of the “guarantee of religious freedom” and freedom of religious practice (Art.4 of the Basic Law). This freedom is not only freedom of belief but also a freedom for external signs or practices of religiosity see Ch. Joppke, Veil. Mirror of Identity . Cambridge, Polity press, 2009.


Note 19
B.Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism. Cultural Diversity and Political Theory , Routledge, 2000.


Note 20
According to Danièle Lochak, “the state’s ignoring of differences is confined to religion.” The author states, in fact, that while France rejects the notion of “minority,” the term does appear in legal texts only in reference to a “religious minority.” In D. Lochak, “Les minorités dans le droit public français: du refus des différences à la gestion des différences,” Conditions des minorités depuis 1789 , CRISPA-GDM, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989, pp. 111–184.


Note 21
Since the 1990s, attempts have been made in three Länder to integrate Islam into the public schools. In Berlin, since religious instruction by and large is associated with the churches, instruction of the Koran has been placed under the supervision of the Turkish state through the intermediary of the Diyanet , its official organ. Dependent on the Prime Minister of Turkey, the Diyanet , the state secretary in charge of religious affairs, is represented in Europe by an organization called DITIP which recruits and distributes imams to the public schools of large European cities. Along with Turkish secular teachers, their presence is included in the bilateral agreements that initially governed the provision of Turkish language classes, and since 1984, with religion classes, both of them outside the curriculum. In Hamburg, a Social Democratic (SPD) Land , language teachers, even of Turkish nationality, enjoy the status of civil servant, and have established instruction in Islam within the Religionspedagogik program that applies to all religions. In northern Westphalia, teachers of theology, scientists, and Christian pedagogues are responsible for implementing a curriculum of Islam.


Note 22
( Süddetsche Zeitung 26.10.2001).


Note 23
T.Modood; Multicultural Politics. Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain . Minneaopolis, University of Minnesota Press (Sociology / Ethnic Studies), 2005.


Note 24
R.Kastoryano, Religion and Incorporation: Islam in France and Germany,  International Migration Review , Winter 2004, pp. 1234–1256.


Note 25
H. Gans, Symbolic Ethnicity. The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America, in Ethnic and Racial Studies , 1976, Vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1–21.


Note 26
Cf. Basch L., Schiller N.G., Blanc C.S., Nations Unbound. Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States .; Gordon Breach Publishers 1997 (4 ème édition)\nCohen R., Global Diasporas. An Introduction , University of Washington Press, Seattle 1997 ; Gupta A., Ferguson J., (eds.) Culture, Power, Place . Durham, Duke Unversity Press, 1997 ; Hannertz U., Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places . London, Routledge 1996 ; A. Portes, « Transnational Communities : Their Emergence and Significance in the Contemporary World System », in R.P.Korzeniewicz and W.C.Smith (eds.) Latin America in the World Economy  ; Greenwood Press ; P. Levitt, « Local-level Global religion : The Case of U.S.-Dominican Migration », in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , 1998, (37)1, pp. 74–89 ; « Transnationalizing Community Development : The Case of Migration Between Boston and the Dominican Republic » in Nonprofit and Voluntary sector Quarterly , vol.26, no.4, December 1997, pp. 509–526.


Note 27
D.Held and al., Global Transnforations, Global Transformations , Oxford, Routledge, 1999.