Virtual Library

The article examines the limitations of methodological nationalism in the studies of social memory through a case study of memory of Stalinist repression in Belarus. It analyses how various social agencies – national and local activists, religious organisations, and international foundations – use the memory of repression for constructing post‐Soviet Belarusian identity by embedding their national representations in larger transnational frameworks. Drawing on the concept of ‘internal globalisation’, this article develops the idea of ‘internal transnationalism’ that suggests the importance of wider transnational configurations for the definition of nation. Internalized transnationalism does not make a national memory concept less nation‐centred, but it affects the choice of its cultural, political and civilizational framing. In contrast to methodological cosmopolitanism that implies rediscovering of the national as an internalized global, methodological transnationalism emphasizes the multiplicity of co‐existing transnational networks that can be invoked by social actors in their national mnemonic agenda. Using the case of the Kurapaty memorial site the article analyses how multiple framings of memory representations – the Belarusian national memory, liberal anti‐communist memory, contesting memories, such as Polish, Baltic and Jewish – compete and juxtapose in the space of social memory of political repression.

This paper addresses the recognition in cosmopolitan debate of a possible disjuncture between the normative ideal of cosmopolitanism and its realization in practice. Taking as its focus the potential conflict between human rights commitments and national concern about immigration control, it reflects on a series of legal challenges to UK government attempts to withdraw support from asylum seekers who do not claim on entry into the country. Set in the context of socio-legal theory, these cases are analysed for signs of a ‘national’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ paradigm in judicial interpretation, and considered as a possible instance of reflexive judgment, espoused as a feature of cosmopolitanism.

This article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Hungarian government’s National Consultation campaign on ‘immigration and terrorism’ in early 2015. The analysis draws on a discourse-historical approach to illuminate how the language and contents of the consultation draw on the discursive and political repertoires of the post-2010 Orbán governments and how, at the same time, they are underpinned by particular elements in the history of migration and diversity in Hungary. The consultation framed immigration as both an economic and security threat and conflated asylum seekers, economic migrants and terrorists, as well as regular and irregular migration. Nevertheless, these discourses would later feed into the government’s response to the large number of asylum seekers who entered the country in the summer of 2015 and would be used to legitimize the actions subsequently taken to tackle what would internationally come to be defined as a ‘crisis’.

This article explores the effects of the legalization of international human rights on citizens and non-citizens within states. Adopting a sociological approach to rights it becomes clear that, even in Europe, the cosmopolitanization of law is not necessarily resulting in greater equality and justice. In fact, ‘actually existing’ cosmopolitan citizenship is characterized by a proliferation of status groups that concretize new forms of inequality, including those of super-citizens, marginal citizens, quasi-citizens, sub-citizens and un-citizens. Far from inaugurating a new era of genuinely universal human rights, in some cases cosmopolitan law may even contribute to the creation of conditions in which fundamental human rights are violated.

Paul Bontemps decided to move his family to Los Angeles from Louisiana in 1906 on the day he finally submitted to a strictly enforced Southern custom—he stepped off the sidewalk to allow white men who had just insulted him to pass by. Friends of the Bontemps family, like many others beckoning their loved ones West, had written that Los Angeles was "a city called heaven" for people of color. But just how free was Southern California for African Americans? This splendid history, at once sweeping in its historical reach and intimate in its evocation of everyday life, is the first full account of Los Angeles's black community in the half century before World War II. Filled with moving human drama, it brings alive a time and place largely ignored by historians until now, detailing African American community life and political activism during the city's transformation from small town to sprawling metropolis. Writing with a novelist's sensitivity to language and drawing from fresh historical research, Douglas Flamming takes us from Reconstruction to the Jim Crow era, through the Great Migration, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the build-up to World War II. Along the way, he offers rich descriptions of the community and its middle-class leadership, the women who were front and center with men in the battle against racism in the American West. In addition to drawing a vivid portrait of a little-known era, Flamming shows that the history of race in Los Angeles is crucial for our understanding of race in America. The civil rights activism in Los Angeles laid the foundation for critical developments in the second half of the century that continue to influence us to this day.

As important aspects of purported tendencies toward globalization and pluralization, recent immigration waves and the resulting presence of culturally different ethnic minorities are often seen as fundamentally challenging liberal nation‐states and traditional models of citizenship. According to this perspective, migrants and ethnic minorities contribute through their claims making both to the external erosion of sovereignty (the postnational challenge), and to the internal cultural differentiation of liberal nation‐states (the multicultural challenge). In contrast, alternative theoretical approaches have emphasized the continuing relevance of the nation‐state in the processes of inclusion and exclusion of minorities. From these three perspectives on citizenship (postnational, multicultural, and national) a set of hypotheses is derived and tested with data on the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in two European countries, Britain and Germany, for the period 1990–95. The data show very little support for the postnational approach, mixed results regarding the multicultural model, and strong support for the continuing relevance of national models of citizenship. Counter to claims that national modes of migrant incorporation have become insignificant, the evidence shows that migrant claims making is still forged in the image of a particular nation‐state.

Immigrant citizenship rights in the nation-state reference both theories of cross-national convergence and the resilience of national political processes. This article investigates European countries’ attribution of rights to immigrants: Have these rights become more inclusive and more similar across countries? Are they affected by EU membership, the role of the judiciary, the party in power, the size of the immigrant electorate, or pressure exerted by anti-immigrant parties? Original data on 10 European countries, 1980–2008, reveal no evidence for cross-national convergence. Rights tended to become more inclusive until 2002, but stagnated afterward. Electoral changes drive these trends: growth of the immigrant electorate led to expansion, but countermobilization by right-wing parties slowed or reversed liberalizations. These electoral mechanisms are in turn shaped by long-standing policy traditions, leading to strong path dependence and the reproduction of preexisting cross-national differences.

Nationalism has become the most prevalent source of political conflict and violence in the world. Scholarship has provided scant guidance about the prospects of containing the dark side of nationalism-its widely publicized excesses of violence, such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Departing from the usual practice of considering only a few examples of nationalism drawn from a limited geographical and historical canvas, this book is based on fundamental theoretical ideas about the formation and solidarity of groups. Containing Nationalism offers a unified explanation of the dynamics of nationalism across the broad sweep of time and space. Among other things, it explains why nationalism is supported by specific forms of inequality between cultural groups, and why it is inclusive at some times and exclusive at others. Nationalism is the attempt of culturally-distinct peoples to attain political self-determination. Self-determination was generally afforded by traditional states, which employed a form of governance based on indirect rule. After the late 18th century, the rise of the modern state led to a new form of governance characterized by direct rule. Containing Nationalism argues that the impetus for the most common type of nationalism arises from the imposition of direct rule in culturally heterogeneous societies. Direct rule stimulates national identity by making cultural distinctions more salient for individuals' life chances. At the same time it reduces the resources of local elites, giving them a motive to mobilize nationalist opposition to central authorities. All told, these effects heighten the demand for sovereignty. The book suggests that political institutions that reintroduce indirect rule offer the leaders of modern countries the best available means of containing nationalist violence within their borders.

The aim of this paper is to explore some contradictory implications of nationalist projects in post-colonial societies. It examines the extent to which elements of national identity and cultural difference are articulated as forms of control over women and which infringe upon their rights as enfranchised citizens. Despite the extensive literature on nationalism, there are relatively few systematic attempts to analyze women's integration into nationalist projects. The little there is conveys seemingly contradictory messages. Like Jayawardena, those who link the rise of feminist movements to anti-colonial and nationalist struggles note its coincidence with a move towards secularism and a broader concern with social reform. Nationalist aspirations for popular sovereignty stimulate an extension of citizenship rights, clearly benefitting women. Since the emergence of women as citizens is also predicated upon the transformation of institutions and customs that keep them bound to the particularistic traditions of their ethnic and religious communities, the modern state is assumed to intervene as a homogenizing agent which acts as a possible resource for more progressive gender politics. In contrast, others expose state interventions as a sham by drawing attention to the entirely instrumental agenda of nationalist policies that mobilize women when they are needed in the labour force or even at the front, only to return them to domesticity or to subordinate roles in the public sphere when the national emergency is over. The apparent convergence between the interests of men and the definition of national priorities leads some feminists to suggest that the state itself is a direct expression of men's interests.