Immigration, Diversity, and Social Change

Migration means crossing borders in more than just a physical way. It is fundamentally challenging the very meanings of such concepts as society, community, identity and citizenship. Migration into Western Europe and into the United States has dramatically increased during the last two decades. The multicultural influx into previously relatively homogenous societies forces citizens and policy-makers to re-think a very basic question: Who belongs?

This research initiative will attempt to answer the following questions, among others: Are the ties that bind the members of the host societies growing stronger or weaker in reaction to the newcomers? Are the publics in these countries still willing to fund the modern welfare state even though it is more difficult to recognize “who is my brother”?

This research initiative will not only look at social change in receiving states for the consequences of migration for the sending states are equally challenging. It can lead to changes in the structure of work, the remittances of migrants often lead to pockets of modernity in otherwise rural societies with attendant social frictions, it can lead to a re-calibration of agricultural versus industrial work, and it can lead to frictions between the receiving and sending states.