The Diversity of Religious Diversity. Using Census and NCS Methodology in Order to Map and Assess the Religious Diversity of a Whole Country

Religious diversity is often captured in “mapping studies” that use mostly qualitative methods in order to map and assess the religious communities in a given area. While these studies are useful, they often present weaknesses in that they treat only limited geographic regions, provide limited possibilities for comparing across religious groups and cannot test theories. In this article, we show how a census and a quantitative national congregations study (NCS) methodology can be combined in order to map and assess the religious diversity of a whole country (Switzerland), overcoming the problems mentioned above. We outline the methodological steps and selected results concerning organizational, geographic, structural, and cultural diversity

Governing immigrants and citizenship regimes: the case of France, 1950s–1990s

Does sustained and increasingly transnational immigration weaken the national character of citizenship regimes? This paper addresses this issue by examining French responses to immigration over a 40-year period. In spite of the changing character of immigration and changing state strategies, all governments throughout this period have sought to maintain the national character by making full access to rights contingent on one's conformity to national values and moralities. As the government made accessing rights dependent on conformity to national norms, the legitimacy of immigrant activists seeking to expand their rights has depended on their abilities to conform to the rules of the national political game. Resisting marginalization therefore requires the assimilation of the immigrants into nationally specific political cultures, which contributes to reinforcing the national character of citizenship regimes. By examining the particular case of France, the paper aims to show how top-down and bottom-up processes by states and activists work in different ways to keep the nation at the center of citizenship regimes in spite of the ongoing and very real challenges presented by transnationalism and globalization

"Migrants, States, and EU Citizenship's Unfulfilled Promise"

A constant aim of EU citizenship, and indeed the entire project of European integration, has always been to lower barriers and create a common space. If the complete elimination of national borders remains elusive, their importance has been diminished in striking ways by the development of EU citizenship and the ban against nationality based discrimination. Yet the barriers to free movement have been lowered in differential ways. Most citizens of EU member states now enjoy residence, employment and other rights throughout Europe. The extension of some rights to some categories of citizens of some new member states is admittedly sometimes subject to transition periods, but these expire. By contrast, third country nationals -- individuals who do not hold citizenship of one of the member states, even though they may have resided for many years, or even been born in Europe -- remain largely excluded from the benefits of EU citizenship. Various initiatives over the years have opened up limited rights for third country nationals. But the difficulty of enacting these rights, and current moves to more restrictive immigration and naturalization policies, highlight the continuing exclusivity of EU citizenship: immigrants migrate to national polities, and they become European only by virtue of incorporation into national states. This means that EU citizenship's transformative potential remains unrealized.Glendon College (York University

I nuovi movimenti migratori: il diritto alla mobilità e le politiche di accoglienza, seconda edizione

Questa seconda edizione nasce dall'esigenza di marcare le tappe più recenti del processo di costruzione di una governance mondiale delle migrazioni e di aggiornare i dati statistici alla luce della rapida evoluzione dello scenario nazionale e mondiale. Sono diversi gli aspetti emersi nel dibattito nazionale e internazionale che meritavano specifici approfondimenti; tra questi indubbia rilevanza è assunta dalle questioni dell’accoglienza di nuovi flussi di richiedenti protezione internazionale, dell’impatto del cambiamento climatico sulla mobilità, dell’esigenza di contemperare i diritti dei migranti con le priorità politiche dei Paesi di partenza, di transito e di arrivo dei flussi migratori. La pandemia di coronavirus si è aggiunta, con la sua drammaticità, ad acuire la condizione di vulnerabilità di tante collettività di migranti e a determinare la chiusura delle frontiere in tutto il mondo

Actual Patterns of Migration Flows: The Challenge of Migration and Asylum in Contemporary Europe

Catherine Wihtol de Wenden analyses the implications of the refugee and migration crisis for the EU. She starts with the fact that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, international migration reached 244 million people (i.e. 3.5% of the world population), with roughly the same number of flows going to the north (south–north and north–north: 120 million) as to the south (south–south and north–south: 130 million). This presents a new situation. Against this background, de Wenden maintains that all regions and countries are, in one way or another, part of the migration process by being involved in either emigration, immigration or transit flows (most of them in all three aspects together). As a result, categories such as ‘foreign workers’ and ‘asylum seekers’ are becoming increasingly blurry. The chapter also shows that new types of migrants—isolated women, unaccompanied children, circulating elites and experts—have entered into international mobility. At the same time, de Wenden reminds us that the right to move is among the least shared in the world: global mobility is highly segmented based on nationality, class, gender, race, etc. As well as this, the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Europe in 1989 brought about generalisation of the right to exit, with easy access to a passport, even in southern countries, along with more restricted rights to enter OECD countries