Imagined Societies

A Critique of Immigrant Integration in Western Europe

Willem Schinkel author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:16th Feb '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Imagined Societies cover

Imagined Societies analyses how discussions of immigrant integration, culture, religion, and sexuality promote notions of national societies.

Imagined Societies explores how images of 'society' and of national belonging have been forged by the media and politicians through the portrayal of immigrants and their 'failed integration'. Examining the experience of the Netherlands and other Western European countries, this book analyses how discussions of integration, culture, religion, and sexuality promote notions of national societies.In many countries in Western Europe, the demand for immigrant integration has inevitably raised questions about the 'societies' into which immigrants are asked to integrate. Imagined Societies critically intervenes in debates on immigrant integration and multiculturalism in Western Europe. Schinkel argues that the term 'multiculturalism' is not used primarily to describe a type of policy or political philosophy in countries such as the Netherlands, France, Germany or Belgium, but rather as a rhetorical device that promotes demands for 'integration'. He analyses how such demands are ways of imagining the very idea of a 'host society' as 'modern', 'secular' and 'enlightened'. Starting from debates in social theory on social imaginaries, and drawing on public debates on citizenship, secularism and sexuality, and on the social science of measuring immigrant integration, this book presents a highly original study of immigrant integration that challenges our understanding of the concept of society.

'Willem Schinkel is one of the most interesting people writing on issues of identity, cultural difference and the policy responses (and exacerbations) that are making these issues so fraught in Europe today. His work on the moralization of citizenship and the implicit models of society in the discourse about immigrants is informed by wide knowledge and is very insightful.' Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science
'Schinkle offers an imaginative view of European identity and the immigration phenomenon at the center of current heated debates throughout Western Europe. His stimulating monograph underscores that what it has meant to be European has been both ephemeral and intangible for centuries.' P. Lorenzini, Choice

ISBN: 9781107129733

Dimensions: 237mm x 159mm x 21mm

Weight: 550g

277 pages