Strangers No More

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
Immigrant Religion

This book compares immigrant integration across key Western countries. Focusing on low-status newcomers and their children, it examines how they are making their way in four critical European countries—France, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands—and, across the Atlantic, in the United States and Canada. This comparison reveals their progress and the barriers they face in an array of institutions—from labor markets and neighborhoods to educational and political systems—and considers the controversial questions of religion, race, identity, and intermarriage. The book sheds new light on questions at the heart of concerns about immigration. They analyze why immigrant religion is a more significant divide in Western Europe than in the United States, where race is a more severe obstacle. They look at why, despite fears in Europe about the rise of immigrant ghettoes, residential segregation is much less of a problem for immigrant minorities there than in the United States. They explore why everywhere, growing economic inequality and the proliferation of precarious, low-wage jobs pose dilemmas for the second generation. They also evaluate perspectives often proposed to explain the success of immigrant integration in certain countries, including nationally specific models, the political economy, and the histories of Canada and the United States as settler societies. This book delves into issues of pivotal importance for the present and future of Western societies, where immigrants and their children form ever-larger shares of the population.

Immigrant Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Socioeconomic Profile ◽  
Western European ◽  
Social Divide ◽  
Immigrant Religion

This chapter describes how immigrant religion generally has become a more significant social divide, a greater challenge to integration, and a more common source of conflict with mainstream institutions and practices in Western Europe than in the United States. There are three main reasons for this. Of paramount importance are basic demographic facts. The religious backgrounds of immigrants in Western Europe and the United States are different, mostly Christian in the United States as compared to Western Europe, where a large proportion is Muslim. Muslims of immigrant origin in Western Europe also have a lower socioeconomic profile than those in the United States. Moreover, Western European native majorities have more trouble recognizing claims based on religion because they are more secular than religiously involved Americans.

The United States and Canada

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Institutional Differences

This edited volume compares the political systems of the United States and Canada, focusing on the effects of political institutions, and their interaction with political values and other factors, in policymaking. It explores the differences between the American presidential (or separation-of-powers) system and the Canadian parliamentary system. It also considers institutional differences such as federalism, bureaucratic leadership, and judicial definitions of citizens’ rights. It deals mainly with the period from the mid-20th century to the present but also discusses recent developments—especially the Trump presidency. The first section addresses political culture and institutions and considers political values, party and electoral systems, executive leadership and the legislative process, bureaucracy and civil service influence, and federalism. The second section addresses policymaking and outcomes, including economic policy, environmental policy, morality issues, social policy, managing diversity, and selected societal outcomes. The conclusion discusses prospects and challenges for both political systems and finds that policy differences between the two countries have diverse causes—from geography and demography, to political values, to institutional structures. The effects of institutions are often crucial, but they depend heavily on interactions with other political circumstances. Even modest, incremental change in the electoral strength or ideological tendencies of the political parties can transform institutional performance. Thus, Canada’s historic center-left moderation may be on the brink of giving way to wider ideological fluctuation and the U.S. political system was increasingly dysfunctional, even before the election of Donald Trump as president led to chaos in policymaking and the threat of severe constitutional crisis.

Council of Europe

1952 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-142
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Session ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe

Responding to an invitation issued in May 1951, fourteen members of the Congress of the United States met in Strasbourg on November 20, 1951 in a special session with twenty members of the Council of Europe. The United States delegation included Senators Benton, Green, Henrickson, Hickenlooper, Humphrey, McMahon and Wiley and Representatives Cox, Ellsworth, Judd, Keating, O'Toole, Reams and Smith. Council representatives were Mssrs. Spaak (Belgium), Brentano (Germany), Boothby (United Kingdom), Crosbie (Ireland), Gerstenmaier (Germany), Glenvil-Hall (United Kingdom), Jacini (Italy), Kieft (Netherlands), Mercouris (Greece), de Menthon (France), Moe (Norway), Mollet (France), Ohlin (Sweden), Parri (Italy), Reynaud (France), Schmid (Germany), Treves (Italy), Urguplu (Turkey), de VallePoussin (Belgium), and Lord Layton (United Kingdom). The session was to discuss “the European Union, its problems, progress, prospects, and place in the Western world”; specifically the agenda included: 1) the economic aspects of rearmament; 2) the political aspects of European defense; 3) the dollar gap and trade between eastern and western Europe; and 4) the problem of refugees and emigration.

Corporate Influence and World War II: Resolving the New Deal Political Stalemate

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Waddell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
State Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The New Deal

Since many scholars focus on the New Deal as the foundation for modern U.S. governance, it is widely assumed that the United States is characterized by a weak state as compared to the welfare states of Western Europe. Yet, in the wake of World War II, the United States established a national security “warfare state” that rivaled the welfare states of Western Europe in scope of authority and operations and in its isolation from popular forces. The wartime redirection of U.S. state power also resolved the political stalemate stemming from the executive-congressional and business-government tensions roused during the New Deal. In fact, the course of wartime statebuilding was in many ways a response to the political tensions of the New Deal and to the expectation that the organization of wartime mobilization would indelibly define the postwar organization of U.S. state power. As this article argues, wartime mobilization resolved the New Deal political stalemate in large part by granting various segments of the corporate community the opportunity to influence the shape of U.S. national state power.

The Political Geometry of the Gulf War

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-209
Author(s):  
Theodore Caplow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union

In the course of World War II, the seven great powers of 1939 – Germany, the Soviet Union. Britain. France, Italy, Japan and the United States – were temporarily reduced to two. each commanding awesome strength, and each posing a realistic threat of world domination. The huge forces of the Soviet Union at the edge of western Europe were positioned to move all the way to the Atlantic, thus achieving the control of the Eurasian heartland that, according to geopolitical doctrine, would confer world domination. There were fifth columns prepared to assist them within most European and Asiatic nations.

Immigrant Integration, Naturalization, and Citizenship

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin A. Schain
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
National Differences ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

The impact of immigration on socioeconomic stability, the challenge of integration, and issues surrounding citizenship has generated the interest of scholars for years. The literature is generally focused on the challenge (rather than the benefits) of immigration for social cohesion, identity, and the well-established rules of citizenship. For social scientists and analysts in Western Europe and the United States, the destabilizing aspects of immigration appear to have largely displaced class as a way of understanding sources of political instability. Scholarly interest in questions of immigrant integration on the one hand and naturalization and citizenship on the other, first emerged in the social sciences in the 1960s. In the United States, integration and citizenship questions have often been explored in the context of race relations. In Europe, the debates on issues of citizenship have been much more influenced by questions of identity and integration. As interest grew in comparison, scholars increasingly turned their attention to national differences that crystallized around national models for integration. However, such models are not always in congruence with aspects of public policy. There are a number of research directions that scholars may consider with respect to immigrant integration, naturalization, and citizenship, such as the relationship between immigrant integration and class analysis, the careful development of theories of policy change, the role of the European Union in the policy process, and the impact of integration and citizenship on the political system.

Instruments and Instrument-Makers, 1700–1850

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita McConnell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Design And Technology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Optical Instruments ◽  
Good Grasp ◽  
Workshop Practice

This article focuses on instruments and instrument-makers during the period 1700–1850. Scientific instruments in the 150 years between 1700 and 1850 enjoyed rapid advances in design and technology that the period can usefully be divided at about 1800, though the date varied with the progress or otherwise in the lands concerned. Throughout this period the leading craftsmen were becoming better-educated, many having a good grasp of mathematics. This article deals mainly with instruments and their makers in Britain, with a brief survey of the situation in western Europe and in the United States. It first describes the political situation in Europe before discussing the British instrument-makers’ workshop practice and materials available in the craftsmen’s workshops, including brass and other alloys, glass and wood. It also considers the British market for optical instruments and philosophical instruments, along with instrument-makers and markets in Continental Europe and the United States.

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