Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
In a world of mutually exclusive nation-states, international migration constitutes a fundamental anomaly. No wonder that such states have been inclined to select migrants according to their origins. The result is ethnic migration.
But Christian Joppke shows that after World War II there has been a trend away from ethnic selectivity and toward non-discriminatory immigration policies across Western states. Indeed, he depicts the modern state in the cross-fire of particularistic and universalistic principles and commitments, with universalism gradually winning the upperhand. Thus, the policies that regulate the boundaries of states can no longer invoke the particularisms that constitute these boundaries and the collectivities residing within them.
Joppke presents detailed case studies of the United States, Australia, Western Europe, and Israel. His book will be of interest to a broad audience of sociologists, political scientists, historians, legal scholars, and area specialists.
Editorials
American Journal of Sociology
This is an impressive and important book. Joppke's analysis is characterized by a wealth of empirical detail and nuance (impossible to convey in a short review such as this), yet he never loses sight of the bigger picture and manages to link together a wide range of cases into a coherent argument. Selecting by Origin is at once an exemplary comparative historical analysis and a powerful contribution to theoretical debates about ethnicity in the liberal state.
— James Hampshire
Contemporary Sociology
A benchmark study that makes a convincing case for both the main flows of convergence theory and the eddies of ethnic policies.
— Thomas Janoski
European Journal of Sociology
It is hard not to be swept along by this brilliantly argued and constructed text.
— Adrian Favell
International Affairs
This is a powerful book. What Joppke has achieved is both impressive and timely, as he tackles in a superb fashion issues that speak to a variety of literatures and research traditions in migration studies. Selecting by Origin has all the ingredients to become a focal point book in several literatures...Methodologically, the study is an excellent model of interdisciplinary research: a combination of sociology, legal studies, comparative historical politics and international relations. Joppke also shows an insatiable appetite for data from which the reader benefits greatly...All in all, he provokes, he challenges, and he argues, with force.
— Philippe Bourbeau
International Migration Review
No brief summary of these cases could do justice to the complexity and nuance of Joppke's argument, which everywhere displays an impressive mastery of legal and other sources...A tour de force and a marvelous read.
— Richard Alba
Journal of Modern History
A timely intervention into the highly charged question of ethnicity and its proper role in citizenship and immigration regimes...Joppke unpacks the justifications, selection mechanisms, and oppositional pressures surrounding ethnic immigration in liberal states. Eschewing the ethnic/civic dichotomy that has dominated these debates, Joppke develops “nationhood” and “liberal stateness” as the variables that serve to explain how much preference for ethnic immigration a particular liberal democracy will show.
— David Abraham