Neoliberal Immigration Policies: Courting the Top v. Fending-Off the Bottom

Date and venue:

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April 12 (Tuesday), 16:30-18:00 JST / (9:30 -11:00 CET) |  Online (Zoom)

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Speaker:

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Christian Joppke is a political sociologist, professor and chair in sociology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Previously he taught at the University of Southern California, European University Institute, University of British Columbia, International University Bremen, and American University of Paris. He has also held research fellowships at Georgetown University and the Russell Sage Foundation, New York. He has authored of more than one hundred publications, monographs and manuscripts and is among the most widely cited authors in the field of citizenship and immigration. Among his recent books are Neoliberal Nationalism: Immigration and the Rise of the Populist Right (Cambridge University Press 2021),.Is Multiculturalism Dead? Crisis and Persistence in the Constitutional State (Cambridge: Polity, 2017);The Secular State Under Siege: Religion and Politics in Europe and America. (Cambridge: Polity, 2015); Legal Integration of Islam: A Transatlantic Comparison (with John Torpey, Harvard University Press, 2013); Citizenship and Immigration (Cambridge: Polity, 2010).

Abtract:

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Previously, Western states' immigration policies have often been looked at from the vantage point of advancing liberalism. Joppke himself argued in 2005 that formal ethnic and racial discriminations have mostly disappeared in these policies. Since the 1990, a “neoliberal” logic has made its appearance. In consists of a duality of “courting the top” and “fending-off the bottom”. In this talk, he will explicate this logic and illustrate it with examples drawn from Western Europe and North America.

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