Immigration policies: a gendered historical comparison

• Autores: Christiane Harzig
• Localización: Crossing borders and shifting boundaries / coord. por Mirjana Morokvasic, Umut Erel, Kyoko Shinozaki, Vol. 1, 2003 (Gender on the Move), ISBN 978-3-8100-3493-9, págs. 35-58
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Worldwide, migration is a human condition which threatens as much as it preconditions social development. Modern industrial societies attempt to politically deal with the issue of human mobility through immigration policies. These policies seek to control borders, regulate the relationship between the migrants and the state, and have to deal with aspects of diversity: e.g. minority formation, ethnic identity, and culture. The United States, Canada and Sweden are often cited as prototypical examples of old and new immigration countries, implying either that Europe should look to North America for examples or, conversely, that Europe’s ‘problems’ with immigration are so new and unique that ‘we’ have to seek ‘our’ own, i.e. culturally specific, solutions. By comparing the historical development of policies in the U.S., Canada and Sweden, the essay challenges the concept of ‘old’ versus ‘new’ immigration countries. Neither have old immigration countries been ‘naturally’ open to immigration nor is immigration a new phenomenon in the European context. Rather, all societies have long, and often conflictual, histories of negotiating issues of migration and diversity (Hoerder, et al., forthcoming).