*** HARLAN KOFF: Fortress Europe or a Europe of Fortresses? The Integration of Migrants in Western Europe. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Regional Integration and Social Cohesion" series, No. 1. 2008, 335 pp, €42-90. ISBN 978-90-5201-443-2.
Managing immigration is clearly a huge challenge for most European Union countries and is embarrassing, to say the least, for all politicians, or at least for those who refuse to raise (exploit) the issue in a simplistic and demagogic manner. Following on from a thesis in politics for Duke University, this rigorous and courageous book turns its back on received ideas and slogans, also rejecting fragmented scientific approaches that are more misleading than explanatory.
As far as Harlan Koff is concerned, "immigration is a complex question in need of a complex answer". In order to build a general theory of integration that embraces all components of life and society, in others words immigrants' contribution to the political, social and economic fabric of the countries they have moved to, the author starts with the idea, explained throughout the book, that reactions to immigration have their roots at the local and/or regional level. He examines this in painstaking research across the European Union, which "obviously contradicts the notion of a uniform Fortress Europe.” In medieval times, when new groups of individuals came to live outside a city's walls, over time the walls were taken down and rebuilt further out, giving rise to bigger, stronger cities and more complex modern societies. The author explains that these days, other walls exist in Europe - physical, legal and psychological walls, which "without a doubt create social inequalities”. The integration of immigrants therefore cannot simply be measured in terms of political integration alone, but has to incorporate integration into business and social life and, more importantly, how the three arenas interact. The author examines all these aspects in four cities of Europe. Summing up, he points out that Florence in Italy and Lille in France are the cities with the highest involvement of immigrants in the host society but also the “least tolerant” cities and the ones most characterised by political battles over immigration issues. Conversely, the tolerant cities of Bari in Italy and Toulouse in France "provide opportunities for cultural integration, but not necessarily for socio-economic participation,” despite the fact that this is the prime need of immigrants when they arrive abroad. This research also enables the author to argue that integration in any one of the three spheres does not automatically lead to integration in the other areas. After extending to its limits the French Republican tradition that ignores ethnic differences and immigrants' rights, Toulouse, the "city with the strongest anti-racist traditions,” is a city where immigrants are kept out of all three domains because the question of immigration is not dealt with as an issue. The author sees this as further evidence that “integration must be based on recognition and dialogue.”
The author argues that it does not make sense to imagine one can deal effectively with the problem of integrating immigrants at either national or EU level, because conflicts between immigrants and the host population take place locally and it is locally that “solutions must be found and partnerships constructed”. Clearly, each of the different “fortress Europes” has to take action to ensure its fortress walls include rather than exclude…
Michel Theys
*** LUTZ RAPHAEL, HERBERT UERLINGS (Eds.): Zwischen Ausschluss und Solidarität. Modi der Inklusion/Exklusion von Fremden und Armen in Europa seit der Spätantike. Peter Lang (1 Moostrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Inklusion/Exklusion.Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart“ series, No. 6. 2008, 570 pp, €80-40. ISBN 978-3-631-58204-6.
Following on from a research programme at Triers University, this book examines the way foreigners and poor people are included in, and excluded from, Europe ever since the days of Antiquity. Covering various topics, the essays take the long view of solidarity and rejection, analysing poverty and the nature of being foreign in a Europe of nation states, and discerning transformations in the solidarity relationship in the various types of collective interpretation. The articles look at the new Christian order and help for the disadvantaged in Europe up until the time of the Middle Ages, solidarity with international immigrants, and Europeanisation and globalisation in terms of how foreigners and the poor are approached. A very enlightening study that goes back into Europe's distant past in order to seek understanding of modern behaviour…
(EPi)
*** IULIA-KARIN PATRUT, HERBERT UERLINGS (Eds.): "Zigeuner" und Nation. Repräsentation-Inklusion-Exklusion. Peter Lang (see above). "Inklusion/Exklusion Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart" series, No. 8, 2008, 711 pp, €54-20. ISBN 978-3-631-57996-1.
This inter-disciplinary book comprises essays about travellers and gypsies, essays which have been presented at international conferences. Developing the ideas of nation, representation, inclusion and exclusion, the essays compare and contrast the persecution and stigmatisation of Jews in Switzerland with the persecution and stigmatisation of gypsies in Germany. Various perspectives are selected in the different essays. Some take a historic, literary or media viewpoint, while others choose to examine representations or inclusion/exclusion of travellers from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Research subjects like analysing Bohemian discourse and the role of Bohemians around the turn of the nineteenth century, the race issue between 1933 and 1945, the role of Bohemians in the modern history of photography, help give a detailed and unusual view of the more general question of travellers. In addition, this detailed book also includes an assessment of the European Union's Roma policy in Romania and Bulgaria. (EPi)
*** PIERRE BERTHELET: : Le paysage européen de la sécurité intérieure. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (see above). "Cité européenne" series, No. 43. 2009, 573 pp, €45-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-473-9.
Europol, Eurojust, Schengen Information System, joint investigation, Europe Police College, liaison officers and judges, centres of police and customs cooperation, the European Judicial Network, Frontex and so on… Homeland security Europe is a dense undergrowth where even wild creatures would be unable to trace their young and, as Nicholas Quillet, a high-ranking official at the French interior ministry, explains in the preface, the mushrooming over the years of so many channels and structures for geographical and thematic cooperation has ended up "affecting the clarity of measures, the action of the departments concerned and the outcomes that people expect". The prime merit of this impressive book is to instil some order into this hotchpotch. The book, explains Nicolas Quillet, "is more limpid even than the subject it paints, making it worthy of Chateaubriand's words: 'The landscape is created by the sun alone. It is light that makes the landscape'.” With clarity and precision, the author paints a highly detailed, balanced and analytical picture in the book of the methods and bodies that have characterised and are changing the European homeland security landscape. The analysis is particularly felicitous in that it distinguishes between the cooperation methods used by national security services in terms of both overarching methods (support structures at EU level for national security outfits) and technical methods that demonstrate that the walls between the two are not impervious. Pierre Berthelet studs this analytical approach with detailed reflection on the nature of the European integration process when it comes to homeland security issues and, as Prof. Monar of Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg points out in the preface, sheds "admirably lucid light on the tension, and contradictions even, that characterises Member States' action" in this domain. As far as the author is concerned, the Member States want to ensure they have mechanisms that perform well but want to retain their margin of action for themselves and their own security services. For this reason, the balance sheet is mitigated but it is nevertheless optimistic, because "cooperation between the Member States' security services seems to be constantly leading to the emergence of new, ever more integrated, measures".
(MT)