Greater mobility and migration have brought about unprecedented levels of diversity that are transforming communities across the Atlantic in fundamental ways, sparking uncertainty over who the "we" is in a society. As publics fear loss of their national identity and values, the need is greater than ever to reinforce the bonds that tie communities together. Yet, while a consensus may be emerging as to what has not worked well, little thought has been given to developing a new organizing principle for community cohesion. Such a vision needs to smooth divisions between immigration's "winners and losers," blunt extremism, and respond smartly to changing community and national identities. This volume will examine the lessons that can be drawn from various approaches to immigrant integration and managing diversity in North America and Europe. The book delivers recommendations on what policymakers must do to build and reinforce inclusiveness given the realities on each side of the Atlantic. It offers insights into the next generation of policies that can (re)build inclusive societies and bring immigrants and natives together in pursuit of shared futures.
This book is designed to introduce the latest advances in academic research of the identity, nationality and immigration issues in the 21th Century. The book is composed of several defining papers that are essentially associated with so- ciety, culture, national identity and immigration. The articles in the book draw attention to social and cultural issues related to nationalism produced and spread all around the World after the French Revolution The issue of national- ism brought about many related subjects which are not only identity and culture but also political and social movement including migration issues. The opinions in each articles reflect its authors’ own thoughts.
This collection explores, from a variety of angles, the beliefs of citizens and noncitizens about the impact that contemporary migration to the USA is having on American culture and on national solidarity. As in other liberal democracies that have experienced mass migration during the past several decades, there is considerable fear and anxiety in the USA about what newcomers are doing to the nation—economically, politically, and (especially) culturally. At the symbolic level, Americans largely embrace the idea that theirs is a nation composed of people from many different origins, but recent arrivals put to the test the extent to which the nation is actually prepared to embrace diversity. The six empirical studies in this volume are divided between those examining how citizens respond to immigrants—including right-wing populists, pragmatic multiculturalists, and immigrant advocates—and how immigrants in turn attempt to integrate into the receiving society. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.
What will the ethnic, racial and cultural face of the United States look like in the upcoming decades, and how will the American population adapt to these changes? Immigration, Cultural Identity, and Mental Health: Psycho-social Implications of the Reshaping of America outlines the various psychosocial impacts of immigration on cultural identity and its impact on mainstream culture. Thoroughly researched, this book examines how cultural identity relates to individual mental health and should be taken into account in mental health treatment. In a time when globalization is decreasing the importance of national boundaries and impacting cultural identity for both minority and mainstream populations, the authors explore the multiple facets of what immigration means for culture and mental health. The authors review the concept of acculturation and examine not only how the immigrant's identity transforms through this process, but also how the immigrant transforms the host culture through inter-culturation. The authors detail the risk factors and protective factors that affect the first generation and subsequent generations of immigrants in their adaptation to American society, and also seek to dispel myths and clarify statistics of criminality among immigrant populations. Further, the book aims to elucidate the importance of ethnicity and race in the psycho-therapeutic encounter and offers treatment recommendations on how to approach and discuss issues of ethnicity and race in psychotherapy. It also presents evidence-based psychological treatment interventions for immigrants and members of minority populations and shows how psychotherapy involves the creation of new, more adaptive narratives that can provide healing, personal growth, and relevance to the immigrant experience. Throughout, the authors provide clinical case examples to illustrate the concepts presented.
Over the course of the 20th century, there have been three primary narratives of American national identity: the melting pot, Anglo-Protestantism, and cultural pluralism/multi-culturalism. This book offers a social and historical perspective on what shaped each of these imaginings, when each came to the fore, and which appear especially relevant early in the 21st century. These issues are addressed by looking at the United States and elite notions of the meaning of America across the 20th century, centering on the work of Horace Kallen, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Samuel P. Huntington. Four structural areas are examined in each period: the economy, involvement in foreign affairs, social movements, and immigration. What emerges is a narrative arc whereby immigration plays a clear and crucial role in shaping cultural stories of national identity as written by elite scholars. These stories are represented in writings throughout all three periods, and in such work we see the intellectual development and specification of the dominant narratives, along with challenges to each. Important conclusions include a keen reminder that identities are often formed along borders both external and internal, that structure and culture operate dialectically, and that national identity is hardly a monolithic, static formation.
The United States is the only nation in the world that allows its citizens to hold one or more foreign citizenships, vote in another nation's elections, run for or be appointed to office in another country, and join the armed forces even of a nation with interests hostile to those of the U.S. while retaining their citizenship. These policies reinforce the often already strong emotional, political, and economic ties today's immigrants retain to their home countries. Yet few studies have addressed what dual citizenship means for the United States as a nation and the integration of immigrants into the American national community. Is it possible to reconcile two different nationalities, cultures, and psychologies? How can we honor immigrants' sense of identity without threatening American national identity? What do Americans have a right to expect of immigrants and what do they have a right to expect of Americans? In The 50% American political psychologist Stanley Renshon offers unique insight into the political and national ramifications of personal loyalties. Arguing that the glue that binds this country together is a psychological force—patriotism—he explains why powerful emotional attachments are critical to American civic process and how they make possible united action in times of crisis. In an age of terrorism, the idea that we are all Americans regardless of our differences is more than a credo; it is essential to our national security. Comprehensive in scope, this book examines recent immigration trends, tracing the assimilation process that immigrants to the United States undergo and describing how federal, state, and local governments have dealt with volatile issues such as language requirements, voting rights, and schooling. Renshon turns a critical eye to the challenges posed over the past four decades by multiculturalism, cultural conflict, and global citizenship and puts forth a comprehensive proposal for reforming dual citizenship and helping immigrants and citizens alike become more integrated into the American national community.
Fifty years of large-scale immigration has brought significant ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to North America and Western Europe, but has also prompted hostile backlashes. In Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity, a distinguished multidisciplinary group of scholars examine whether and how immigrants and their offspring have been included in the prevailing national identity in the societies where they now live and to what extent they remain perpetual foreigners in the eyes of the long-established native-born. What specific social forces in each country account for the barriers immigrants and their children face, and how do anxieties about immigrant integration and national identity differ on the two sides of the Atlantic? Western European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have witnessed a significant increase in Muslim immigrants, which has given rise to nativist groups that question their belonging. Contributors Thomas Faist and Christian Ulbricht discuss how German politicians have implicitly compared the purported “backward” values of Muslim immigrants with the German idea of Leitkultur, or a society that values civil liberties and human rights, reinforcing the symbolic exclusion of Muslim immigrants. Similarly, Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak find that in the Netherlands, the conception of citizenship has shifted to focus less on political rights and duties and more on cultural norms and values. In this context, Turkish and Moroccan Muslim immigrants face increasing pressure to adopt “Dutch” culture, yet are simultaneously portrayed as having regressive views on gender and sexuality that make them unable to assimilate. Religion is less of a barrier to immigrants’ inclusion in the United States, where instead undocumented status drives much of the political and social marginalization of immigrants. As Mary C. Waters and Philip Kasinitz note, undocumented immigrants in the United States. are ineligible for the services and freedoms that citizens take for granted and often live in fear of detention and deportation. Yet, as Irene Bloemraad points out, Americans’ conception of national identity expanded to be more inclusive of immigrants and their children with political mobilization and changes in law, institutions, and culture in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Canadians’ views also dramatically expanded in recent decades, with multiculturalism now an important part of their national identity, in contrast to Europeans’ fear that diversity undermines national solidarity. With immigration to North America and Western Europe a continuing reality, each region will have to confront anti-immigrant sentiments that create barriers for and threaten the inclusion of newcomers. Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity investigates the multifaceted connections among immigration, belonging, and citizenship, and provides new ways of thinking about national identity.
In A Forgetful Nation, the renowned postcolonialism scholar Ali Behdad turns his attention to the United States. Offering a timely critique of immigration and nationalism, Behdad takes on an idea central to American national mythology: that the United States is “a nation of immigrants,” welcoming and generous to foreigners. He argues that Americans’ treatment of immigrants and foreigners has long fluctuated between hospitality and hostility, and that this deep-seated ambivalence is fundamental to the construction of national identity. Building on the insights of Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida, he develops a theory of the historical amnesia that enables the United States to disavow a past and present built on the exclusion of others. Behdad shows how political, cultural, and legal texts have articulated American anxiety about immigration from the Federalist period to the present day. He reads texts both well-known—J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass—and lesser-known—such as the writings of nineteenth-century nativists and of public health officials at Ellis Island. In the process, he highlights what is obscured by narratives and texts celebrating the United States as an open-armed haven for everyone: the country’s violent beginnings, including its conquest of Native Americans, brutal exploitation of enslaved Africans, and colonialist annexation of French and Mexican territories; a recurring and fierce strand of nativism; the need for a docile labor force; and the harsh discipline meted out to immigrant “aliens” today, particularly along the Mexican border.
This innovative book applies contemporary and emergent theories of identity formation to timely questions of identity re/formation and development in immigrant families across diverse ethnicities and age groups. Researchers from across the globe examine the ways in which immigrants from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America dynamically adjust, adapt, and resist aspects of their identities in their host countries as a form of resilience. The book provides a multidisciplinary approach to studying the multidimensional complexities of identity development and immigration and offers critical insights on the experiences of immigrant families. Key areas of coverage include: Factors that affect identity formation, readjustment, and maintenance, including individual differences and social environments. Influences of intersecting immigrant ecologies such as family, community, and complex multidimensions of culture on identity development. Current identity theories and their effectiveness at addressing issues of ethnicity, culture, and immigration. Research challenges to studying various forms of identity. Re/Formation and Identity: The Intersectionality of Development, Culture, and Immigration is an essential resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians, professionals, and policymakers in the fields of developmental, social, and cross-cultural psychology, parenting and family studies, social work, and all interrelated disciplines.
Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2012 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Kultur und Landeskunde, , Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: “Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity - an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.” (Hubert H. Humphrey) This term paper deals with the reasons for the challenging task of defining America’s national identity and will introduce several historical concepts of defining this terminology. The aim of the following pages is to answer the question if the terms melting pot or salad bowl are truly reflecting a multicultural American society, if the myth of the American Dream includes all the various ethnicities living in the USA and if there is a unique national identity that is shared by the whole population of the U.S.
