Age of Rages: Nationalisms

Webinar 4: Civic Nationalism and the Challenges of Integration

Moderator:

Yasmine Wong is a Senior Analyst with the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Yasmine holds a Masters of Science in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her current research focuses on issues pertaining to social resilience, social cohesion and inter-group relations.

Abstract/Speakers:

On Putting Civic Nationalism in Its Place

Nationalism is the politicisation of national identity. ‘Civic nationalism’ aims to depoliticise national identity. The notion of civic nationalism is thus something of a misnomer. This does not mean that it has no place in responding to the nationalist question, only that its place needs to be carefully delineated. To that end, I suggest the need to differentiate not only ethnic and civic nationalisms – the classic distinction – but also cultural nationalism from ethnic nationalism and liberal nationalism from civic nationalism. With this more precise picture of the available options, civic nationalism can be seen to be misleading insofar as it masks the degree to which even Western liberal states engage in the promotion and reproduction of national cultures. However, civic nationalism is helpful if it is not mistaken for a comprehensive form of nationalism. Specifically, it models how particular domains of state and government activity, such as citizenship acquisition, may focus on formal rights and obligations to the exclusion of other attributes. These various points are illustrated with reference to Australia.

Geoffrey Brahm Levey is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. From 2011-2016, he was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow researching issues of Australian national identity in relation to liberal democracy and cultural diversity. His books include, as editor, Autonomy, Authenticity and Multiculturalism (2015), Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism (2008, 2012), and Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship (2008, with Tariq Modood).

Civic or Neoliberal? Nationalism and Immigrant Integration

This talk scrutinizes neoliberal elements in Western states` recent integration policies, often summed up as “civic integration”. These policies have commonly been considered as either “illiberal” or “liberal”, whereby the “neoliberal” element tends to get lost or overlooked. This neoliberal element in immigrant integration can be detected in the “conditionalizing” of residence permits and the access to (post-birth) citizenship on individual merit and desert. One might interpret this development from the lens of a genuinely “neoliberal nationalism”, which is a new entry in the nations and nationalism lexicon.

Christian Joppke holds a chair in sociology at the University of Bern (CH). He is also a Visiting Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University, Budapest, and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University (Denmark). He is Member of the German Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR). After earning his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1989, Joppke held professorial appointments at the University of Southern California, European University Institute, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), International University Bremen, and the American University of Paris. He also held visiting fellowships at Georgetown University and the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. He is the author of nine books, most recently Legal Integration of Islam (with John Torpey) (Harvard UP 2013), The Secular State Under Siege: Religion and Politics in Europe and America (Cambridge: Polity 2015), and Is Multiculturalism Dead? Crisis and Persistence in the Constitutional State (Cambridge: Polity 2017). Joppke is a leading authority in the comparative study of immigration policies, citizenship, multiculturalism, and religion.

Discussant:

Daphne Halikiopoulou is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. Her work focuses on nationalism and the cultural and economic determinants of far right party support in Europe. She is the author of The Golden Dawn’s ‘Nationalist Solution’: explaining the rise of the far right in Greece and numerous articles on European far right parties. Her work has been published in the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of Common Market Studies, Nations and Nationalism and Government and Opposition among others. She has received an award from the American Political Science Association for her work on labour market institutions and far right party support (2016). She is Vice-President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) and an editor of the journal Nations and Nationalism.