COMPARATIVE

Hansen / THE OTHER

POLITICAL
IMMIGRANTS
STUDIES
TO/ April
EUROPE2002

Long confined to historians and sociologists, the study of immigration has garnered increased
interest among political scientists. Two dominant schools—the globalization and embedded
realist theses—have attempted to account for the gap between restrictionist intentions of govern-
ments and continuing immigration (the gap hypothesis). The globalization thesis argues that
international norms and institutions limit governments’ ability to control migration; the embed-
ded realist thesis counters that limits on state autonomy are domestic. This article argues that
although the embedded realist thesis is on stronger conceptual ground, both fail to account for
two central categories of immigrants to Europe: colonial immigrants to France and Britain and
asylum seekers to Germany. Drawing on historical institutionalist work, this article employs a
path-dependent analysis to account for these categories. Against their own wishes, governments
found themselves accepting larger migrations and naturalizations because of the path-dependent
effects of their own citizenship and constitutional regimes.

GLOBALIZATION, EMBEDDED
REALISM, AND PATH DEPENDENCE
The Other Immigrants to Europe

RANDALL HANSEN
University of Oxford

L ong confined to historians and sociologists, the study of immigration

has garnered increased interest among political scientists. Scholars have
attended to both its central role in domestic American and European politics
and its implications for globalization and the constraint of state power (Free-
man, 1995, 1998; Hollifield, 1992; Joppke, 1998a; King, 2000; Messina,
1996). Within Western Europe, the study of migration is relatively new,
reflecting European societies’ recent transformation from countries of emi-
gration to countries of immigration.1 All Northwest European countries began

1. France represents something of an exception to this trend. See Weil (1995).

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For comments, my thanks to Erik Bleich, James A. Caporaso, Matthew
Gibney, Ira Katznelson, Desmond King, Robert Lieberman, Iain McLean, Jeannette Money, and
the journal’s three anonymous referees.
COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 35 No. 3, April 2002 259-283
© 2002 Sage Publications

259
260 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

the postwar years with largely homogeneous populations; all enter a new
century with non-European citizens and permanent residents ranging from
5% to 10% of the population. Issues linked with immigration, race, and
multiculturalism have been at the center of domestic politics and policy for
more than two decades.2 In France, Austria, and Switzerland, the far right has
made substantial—in Austria, dramatic—gains at the local and national level;
in Germany, dual citizenship and the reform of nationality law more broadly
were among the most divisive issues faced by the Social Democratic (SPD)/
Green government elected in October 1998. Across Europe, a sharp increase
in asylum seekers in the 1990s led to a common European Union (EU)
response in the form of harmonized (and restricted) standards.
The pivotal role of migration-related issues in European politics is all the
more striking given that virtually no one would have predicted or wanted a
multicultural Europe. No North European country sought to increase its
population through permanent non-European migration, and none predicted
that those workers who were encouraged to come, or who arrived without
encouragement, would be anything but temporary guests. Indeed, one of the
constants in Europe—and perhaps even in North America—has been public
suspicion of continued immigration. As the authors of a recent study of Aus-
tralia, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom concluded,

The one major and consistent theme that is sharply and clearly defined in each
country’s responses to national public opinion polls is that in no country—
those with long histories of admitting immigrants, those with more restriction-
ist policies, and those who have consistently kept a lock on their doors—does a
majority of citizens have positive feelings about their current cohort of immi-
grants. (Simon & Lynch, 1999, p. 458; also see Martin, 1997, p. 22)

Yet 25 years after immigration was officially halted, North European soci-
eties are multicultural societies facing issues of integration—the encourage-
ment or discouragement of cultural diversity, the acceptance or prohibition of
non-Christian edicts in public life, the need to extend citizenship to perma-
nent residents—identical to those of self-avowed countries of immigration.
The transformation of Europe into a continent of immigration is one of the
most important sociological developments and one of the most intriguing
policy puzzles in postwar European politics.
This article accounts for two central aspects of postwar migration to
Europe that cannot be fully explained by existing approaches: colonial immi-
2. Terms such as culture, race, and ethnicity are inherently ambiguous. In this article, I have
opted for the term multiculturalism rather than, for example, multiracialism (which is prevalent
in the British literature), and I understand it to refer to the arrival in Western Europe of migrants
from non–Western European countries.
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 261

gration to France and Britain and the migration of asylum seekers to Ger-
many. It has three components. The first outlines the existing approaches—
the globalization and embedded realist theses—offering contrasting
accounts of why European states were forced to accept migrations for which
they had little sympathy. Both accounts, but especially the globalization the-
sis, are unable to account for (certain) categories of colonial migrants to the
United Kingdom and France or for the disproportionate number of asylum
seekers received by Germany. The second draws on the historical
institutionalist literature, particularly work on path dependence and policy
feedback. The third applies this historical institutionalist framework to the
French, British, and German cases.

EXISTING ACCOUNTS: LIBERAL THEORY AND

THE GLOBALIZATION THESIS

The puzzle of immigration to Europe is that none of the three largest

receiving countries—Britain, France, and Germany—intended non-European
immigration to be permanent. The United Kingdom rejected the use of colo-
nial immigration as a solution to the country’s intense, if brief, postwar labor
shortages (Hansen, 2000; Spencer, 1997), and both France and Germany
planned to operate only temporary guestworker schemes.3 A large body of lit-
erature has thus attempted to answer two questions: (a) Why did “guests”
become permanent residents, and (B) Why, despite the professed commit-
ment since the early 1970s to no further primary immigration, does it
continue?

THE GLOBALIZATION AND EMBEDDED REALIST THESES

There are essentially two theoretical approaches attempting to account for

the “gap” between restrictionist intentions and liberal outcomes:4 the global-
ization and the embedded realist theses. The globalization thesis, associated
above all with Sassen, holds that the logic of globalization (understood as
increasingly integrated international capital and service markets) renders
migration controls essentially untenable. There are three elements to the
argument. First, important elements of immigration policy have shifted from

3. European governments’desire to ensure that guestworker policies would be (as the name
implies) temporary is well established. See Freeman (1979) and Hollifield (1992).
4. The “gap hypothesis” was first observed by Hollifield (1986). This section draws on
Hansen (2000, Introduction).
262 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

states to supranational institutions, most importantly the EU but also the

European Court of Human Rights and bilateral and multilateral arrangements
(Sassen, 1998). Second, consistent with the arguments of postnationalism
(Soysal, 1994),5 an emergent international human rights regime—channeled
domestically through the judiciary—reduces the capacity of nation-states to
limit immigration and refugee movements (thus restricting sovereignty)
(Sassen, 1998, pp. 69-71). Finally, there is a sort of unstable tension between
the increasingly free movement of services, capital, and goods, on one hand,
and the maintenance of limits on the movement of laborers, on the other
(Sassen, 1996).
Although enjoying many adherents, the globalization thesis has come
under attack from what can be called embedded realism. The thesis is realist
because it recognizes an interest among (rationally motivated) nation-states
in limiting certain categories of immigration; it is embedded because it
attends to the role of institutional constraints in limiting this aim. Its chief
point of departure from the globalization thesis is on the source of constraints
on a restrictionist immigration policy. Freeman (1995, 1998), who first devel-
oped the thesis, holds that the modest expansiveness characteristic of West-
ern immigration policies results not from international institutions but from
the dynamics of the domestic political process. Applying a model of client
politics developed by Wilson (1980), Freeman argues that the distributional
consequences of migration policy—concentrated benefits and diffuse
costs—result, in the context of information scarcity and discourse constraints
on those opposed to immigration, in an incentive structure favoring a mod-
estly expansive policy toward migrants and legal permanent residents. Public
opinion, though often hostile to immigration, is constrained by incomplete
information and limits on discourse, namely the risk of charges of racism and
an inability to defend ethnically based migration policies. Extreme-right par-
ties are small and weak, and they are up against a tendency among large main-
stream parties to seek a consensus taking immigration off the political agenda
(Messina, 1989).6 Those benefiting from immigration—businesses and fam-
ilies and ethnic relations of those in migrant streams—are well organized and

5. Postnationalism, to summarize briefly, holds first that universal personhood has decoup-
led rights from citizenship and from identity (one can enjoy many of the rights of German citi-
zenship without being German) and second that this development resulted from the internation-
alization and universalization of human rights legislation and discourse.
6. Austria’s decision to bring Jorg Haider’s far-right Freheitliche Parteis Österreich (FPÖ)
into the governing coalition might seem to weaken this point, but it in fact strengthens it. The
condition of the FPO’s entry was its willingness to sign up—literally and metaphorically—to a
whole series of consensual, liberal European commitments, although none of this saved Austria
from the freezing of bilateral relations by all 14 other EU member states.
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 263

influential; politicians, in turn, have a rational interest in satisfying them.

Finally, the costs of immigration, in the short run, fall on the least-advantaged
members of society with few channels for voice and, in the long run, are dif-
fuse, falling belatedly on the society as a whole.7 The model was subse-
quently modified by Joppke (1998a), who draws attention to domestic courts
and the legal process as separate and powerful sources of expansiveness
toward migrants. Judges are shielded from popular pressure and obligated to
apply universal principles with objectivity. The embedded realist thesis gen-
erates two hypotheses about the treatment of intended migrants and actual
guestworkers. For the former, admission policies will be more open than the
public would prefer; for the latter, their status will be more secure—free of
expulsion, entitled to social rights—than either the public wants or the gov-
ernment intends.
Applied to Europe, the thesis can be simply stated: European nation-states
were opposed to the permanent settlement of guestworkers and pursued a
series of strategies—limiting family reunification, blocking the renewal of
work permits—designed to ensure the return of immigrants whose welcome
was overstayed with the end of the postwar boom. Domestic courts, however,
blocked these efforts, arguing that domestic constitutions and domestic con-
stitutional jurisprudence implied both a right to remain and a right to family
reunification (Joppke, 1999).
Of the two, the embedded realist thesis clearly provides the more persua-
sive account. The globalization thesis suffers from a number of damaging
theoretical and empirical errors. First, the opening of Europe’s internal bor-
ders has been entirely consistent with the closing of other borders to
non-European and/or third world migrants (Feldblum, 1998). It is not that the
EU cannot control, for reasons of logical coherence or human rights, immi-
gration from outside its borders; it is rather that it chooses for reasons of
national and European interest to tolerate and encourage migration among
select and wealthy EU member states. Second, the thesis lumps together
separate immigration streams: Asylum seekers cannot be compared with
labor migrants, and labor migrants vary greatly in origin, qualifications, and
relationship to the destination country. If globalization undermines any
migration controls, these are likely controls on skilled migration.8 The impo-
sition—again in Europe, as the United States is a more complicated case—of
tight controls on non-EU migrants has been accompanied by the relative

7. Freeman (1995) specifies the model on pages 882-885; I take these arguments directly
from them.
8. In the year 2000, both Germany and the United Kingdom announced schemes to wel-
come on a temporary basis high-skill workers to fill shortages in technology-related industries.
264 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

relaxation of controls on skilled migration.9 In this case, however, globaliza-

tion becomes a code word for national self-interest: Skilled migration is the
sort that every nation has a prima facie interest in attracting. Third, the thesis
is unable to account for the example of the United Kingdom, referred to by
Freeman (1994) as a “deviant case” in its ability to curtail immigration. The
United Kingdom successfully combines highly open capital and service mar-
kets with one of the most restrictive immigration regimes in the world
(Hansen, 2000, chap. 10; also Joppke, 1998b). Finally, the embedded realists,
attending to the micro level of analysis ignored by globalization and
postnationalist theorists, have demonstrated that the major judicial decisions
securing immigrants’ right to remain within Europe were taken by domestic
courts with reference to domestic constitutions. Human rights treaties of
course exist, but some states sign the treaties without incorporating them into
domestic legislation, some incorporate them with severely restraining cave-
ats, and some ignore them altogether. The result is that, lacking incorporation
guarantees and enforcement mechanisms, they remain nonbinding public
international law, often little more than a statement of normative intent.
Although a significant advance on the inadequate globalization account,
the embedded realist thesis falls short in that it cannot fully explain some of
the largest and/or most politically explosive postwar migrations to Europe. If
the thesis is to offer an account of why a temporary migration became perma-
nent, it must explain why all categories of immigrants—though not all immi-
grants within a given category—were able to evade policy makers’ restric-
tionist intentions. Although the embedded realist thesis does a good job of
explaining continuing migration in the form of family reunification, it is less
successful in accounting for colonial immigrants to Britain and France and
the movement of asylum seekers to Germany; collectively, these migrants
constitute a large proportion of total population flows. This can easily be seen
in data from the three countries.
Before examining these data, a word should be said about case selec-
tion. The cases below were chosen for two reasons. First, in all cases the
concern is population movement and/or naturalization. Unlike other aspects
of immigration—such as multiculturalism, identity, and conceptions of citi-
zenship—data, in the form of numbers, are available on both. Second, all
three cases below are widely recognized within the immigration literature as
central issues in the postwar politics of immigration.

9. This was witnessed most recently in a spring 2000 call by Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder for 20,000 high-tech guestworkers to address sectoral shortages in this area (Klingst,
2000). A few months later, Britain followed suit.
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 265

COLONIAL IMMIGRATION TO FRANCE

Table 1 presents data on France for the period up to early 1975, before or
as efforts were made to end primary and limit secondary immigration.
The important figures in the table are those on Algerians and French Mus-
lims (mostly from Algeria). Because French Muslims born in France were
French citizens at birth, they were free from deportation or any other repres-
sive government measure aimed at immigrants and resident aliens. The fact
that they were citizens at birth, however, was an anomaly placing them in a
category distinct from all other migrants; one of the foundations of French
nationality law is double ius soli; citizenship should only “kick in” at the third
generation, not the second. Why did Algerian immigrants find themselves in
this privileged position?

COLONIAL IMMIGRATION TO BRITAIN

Broadly speaking, the British case presents a far greater difficulty for the
embedded realist thesis, because all of its colonial migrants entering the
United Kingdom before 1962 enjoyed free entry and full citizenship on arrival.
Pre-1962 British experience was nonetheless in some measure unique, and
post-1962 policy has conformed to the logic of the embedded realist thesis. In
a manner opposite to that of France, Germany, and the United States, the
absence of institutional constraints on the executive—no bill of rights, a weak
legislature, and a timid judiciary—has (a) allowed British policy makers to
translate public preferences into public policy more directly than in any other
liberal democracy and (b) resulted today in one of the tightest immigration
control regimes in the Western world (Freeman, 1994; Hansen, 2000). The
thesis nonetheless ignores a significant—numerically and even more so
politically—category of migrants: East African Asians. From 1962 until 1968,
some 200,000 Asians (broadly, those of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi
descent) in East Africa continued to enjoy a right to enter the United King-
dom against the wishes of the U.K. government. They did so in ever-larger
numbers: from approximately 2,000 per year in the early to mid-1960s to
13,600 in 1967 alone.10 The British government, with an eye on the potential
global total of 200,000, closed the door on March 1, 1968. The decision cre-
ated the most divisive immigration crisis of postwar British history. It was
bitterly opposed by Labour’s most important supporters, it divided both the

10. Statistics on the movement of East African Asians are difficult to obtain, as they entered
with British passports and were thus poorly recorded by immigration officers. I have taken these
from Home Office (interior ministry) pronouncements at the time and the diaries of cabinet min-
isters. See Home Office statistics cited in The Times, “Citizens From Kenya” (1968); also see
Callaghan (1987, pp. 222-225) and Castle (1984, p. 378).
266

Table 1
Immigrants in France, 1975

Current or Former Citizenship

French
Italian Spanish Algerian Muslim Portuguese Moroccan Tunisian Turkish

Migrants 363,300 403,235 448,175 632,170 225,925 114,990 48,145

Naturalized French 351,350 206,280 4,400 83,350 27,630 19,020 36,135 11,370
Citizens (French at birth)
Total 714,650 609,515 452,575 83,350 659,800 244,945 151,125 59,515
Source: Tribalat, Garson, Moulier-Boutang, and Silberman (p. 32).
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 267

Liberal and Conservative parties, and it fatally undermined the United King-
dom’s credibility in the eyes of the Commonwealth (Hansen, 1999).
What is of interest here is not only the crisis itself but the fact that it should
not have happened at all: The British Government explicitly applied 1962
immigration controls—the Commonwealth Immigrants Act—to the East
African Asians. They, like all other Commonwealth citizens, were to have no
right to enter the United Kingdom. Yet some 200,000 had done exactly that.
Why did this happen?
To summarize, two aspects of postwar immigration to France and Britain
cannot be accounted for by embedded realism: the exceptional grant of citi-
zenship (and thus protection from reprisal) to some 83,000 Algerians at birth
in France and the continued enjoyment, post–immigration control, of a right
of entry by East African Asians—one that led to the most divisive immigra-
tion-related crisis in postwar British politics.

ASYLUM SEEKERS IN GERMANY

Yet there is another way in which the embedded realist thesis falls short.
Although it convincingly accounts for why family members and asylum
seekers could not be driven out, it says little about why their movements vary
so much. Until the late 1990s, when the number of asylum figures began to
converge across Europe (largely in response to EU efforts at harmonization),
these figures varied widely. Table 2 provides an overview of asylum applica-
tions across the EU.
Thus, the preferred destination by far was Germany. It is a quantitative dif-
ference that embedded realism cannot account for, as both Germany and
other major European receiving countries (notably France) have entrenched
bills of rights and activist domestic judiciaries.11 A further factor, familiar to
students of migration, might be the solution to the puzzle. We know from
studies of immigration patterns that migrants prefer countries (a) in which
their language is spoken, (b) that already host migrants with the same nation-
ality, and/or (c) that are otherwise viewed as culturally similar (Loescher,
1993, pp. 17-18). No one speaks German but the Germans, Austrians, and
11. There is, to be sure, a gap between those seeking asylum and those granted it. The number
of applications is nonetheless still the greatest predictor of the number remaining: The percent-
age of those accepted is no lower in Germany than in France and Britain (and is often higher),
leading to larger acceptances; many of those denied end up with the right to remain (Duldung, or
tolerated status, in Germany; or permanent leave to remain in Britain); and some simply remain
in the country illegally. Deportation is unpopular, expensive, subject to constant delay and
appeal, and as a result is an ineffective tool for controlling immigration to Europe. On the norma-
tive issues raised by asylum seekers, see Gibney (1999); on deportation, see Gibney & Hansen
(2001).
268

Table 2
Asylum Seekers in Select European Countries, 1985-1997 (in thousands)

Country 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

Austria 6.7 8.7 11.4 15.8 21.9 22.8 27.3 16.2 4.7 5.1 5.9 7.0 6.7 13.8
Belgium 5.3 7.7 6.0 5.1 8.1 13.0 15.2 17.8 26.9 14.3 11.4 12.4 11.8 22
Denmark 8.7 9.3 2.8 4.7 4.6 5.3 4.6 13.9 14.4 6.7 5.1 5.9 5.1 5.7
Finland — — — — 0.2 2.5 2.1 3.6 2.0 0.8 0.8 0.7 — —
France 25.8 23.4 24.8 31.6 60.0 56.0 46.5 28.9 27.6 26.0 20.2 17.2 21 22.4
Germany 73.9 99.7 57.4 103.1 121.0 193.0 256.0 438.2 322.6 127.2 127.9 116.4 151.7 98.6
Greece 1.4 4.3 6.3 9.3 6.5 4.1 2.7 2.0 0.8 1.3 1.4 1.6 — —
Ireland — — — — — 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.4 0.4 1.2 — —
Italy 5.4 6.5 11.0 1.3 2.2 4.7 31.7 2.6 1.6 1.8 1.7 0.6 — —
Luxembourg — — — — — 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.3 — —
Netherlands 5.7 5.9 13.5 7.5 14.0 21.2 21.6 20.3 35.4 52.5 29.3 22.9 34.4 45.2
Norway 0.9 2.7 8.6 6.6 4.4 4.0 4.6 5.2 12.9 3.4 1.5 1.8 — —
Portugal 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.3 0.7 2.1 0.6 0.5 0.3 — —
Spain 2.3 2.3 2.5 3.3 4.0 8.6 8.1 11.7 12.6 12.0 5.7 4.7 — —
Sweden 14.5 14.6 18.1 19.6 32.0 29.0 27.3 84.0 37.6 18.6 9.0 5.8 — —
Switzerland 9.7 8.6 10.9 16.7 24.4 36.0 41.6 18.0 24.7 16.1 17.0 18.0 24 41.3
United Kingdom 6.2 5.7 5.9 5.7 16.8 38.2 73.4 32.3 28.0 42.2 55.0 27.9 32.5 46
Totals — — — — — 438.7 563.2 695.5 554.2 329.1 293.1 244.5 — —
Source: Salt (1999), U.S. Committee for Refugees (1999).
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 269

some of the Swiss, but factors (b) and perhaps (c) are clearly important. Ger-
many has a large Turkish and Yugoslavian community—the latter made up a
large percentage of 1990s entrants—and the country has long historical ties
to Eastern Europe (Ash, 1993, Introduction and Conclusion). But this
accounts for only part of the movement and in some measure restates the
question: How did these individuals, if they entered as asylum seekers, get
into Germany in the first place?
In sum, whatever the analytical power of the embedded realist thesis—and
it is in migration studies the most sophisticated explanatory framework going—
it fails to account for both particular categories of immigrants (colonial
immigrants to France and Britain) and variations within one category it
delineates (the massive arrival of asylum seekers in Germany). Quantita-
tively, this amounts to literally hundreds of thousands of individuals; qualita-
tively, these numbers represent—in addition to obvious personal histories
and life chances—numerous political issues (housing, social services, public
opposition, support for the extreme right, race, and integration policy) spin-
ning off from them. Algerians’ easy access to French citizenship became a
national political issue in the 1980s, and the racist Front National placed it at
the center of its campaigns. The ultimate withdrawal of the East Africans’
exemption was the most divisive immigration legislation in postwar British
history. In Germany, asylum became one of the most explosive issues of the
early 1990s, fueling public opposition and, in 1992, racist attacks that
shocked the nation and raised (unrealized) fears of a return to significant far
right politics.

COLONIAL IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM SEEKERS:

A PATH-DEPENDENT ACCOUNT

In the past decade, political scientists have accorded growing attention to

the role of path dependence in politics (Pierson, 1996, p. 131, 2000; Putnam,
1993; Thelen, 1999).12 When clearly defined, path dependence does not
merely mean that decisions and events today are in some general sense the
product of earlier decisions and events. A path-dependent effect can be said
to occur only when a previous decision reinforces itself, when it determines
in part the future development of events. Levi (1997), who brings a healthy
skepticism to path dependence, puts it this way:

12. For classic applications in economic history, see Arthur (1989). For a critique of path
dependence (and especially Paul David’s work), see Liebowitz and Margolis (1990).
270 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

Path dependence does not simply mean that “history matters.” This is both true
and trivial. Path dependence has to mean, if it is to mean anything, that once a
country or region has started down a track, the costs of reversal are very high.
There will be other choice points, but the entrenchments of certain institutional
arrangements obstruct an easy reversal of the initial choice. Perhaps the better
metaphor is a tree, rather than a path. From the same trunk, there are many dif-
ferent branches and smaller branches. Although it is possible to turn around or
to clamber from one to the other—and essential if the chosen branch dies—the
branch on which a climber begins is the one she tends to follow. (p. 27)

The important point is that it has to be more than “history matters.” Path
dependence has to be more than the claim that “what has happened at an ear-
lier point in time will affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events at a
later point in time” (Sewell, 1996, pp. 262-263). This is simply to say that any
given constellation of events, interests, and actors is determined by multiple
events in the past, from the micro-personal—Bill Clinton went into public
life, rather than remaining a lawyer, which made 1990s’ U.S. politics differ-
ent from what it might have been—to the macro-historical—the fact that
Wall Street crashed in 1929 and not 1939 (when the German economy might
have been on a solid footing), positively affected the Nazi rise to power. It is a
claim that (a) would make most historians’ eyes glaze over in its obviousness
and (b) says nothing about “exit” capabilities from a given historical track
(Pierson, 1998).13
So why, then, does the original entrenchment create a limiting effect?
There is no consensus in the literature on this point, but Krasner (1988), who
popularized the logic behind path dependence among political scientists,
suggests a useful standard: “The basic characteristic of an institutional argu-
ment is that prior institutional choices limit available future options.” The
range of options available at any point in time is constrained by extant institu-
tional capabilities, and these capabilities are themselves a product of choices
made during some earlier period (pp. 71-72). To put it another way, path
dependence occurs when a decision limits the range of available options at
subsequent points and, in so doing, encourages continuity in the form of a
retention of the original choice.
Political scientists are divided about whether path dependence predicts
and identifies causal mechanisms or, most skeptically, is little more than a
rich metaphor for policy continuity.14 This debate will continue (Thelen,
1999), and it suffices to note that there are at least two prerequisites to speak-
ing coherently, as distinct from merely fashionably, about path dependence:
the delineation of moments at which a path-dependent effect is exhibited and

13. My thanks to Paul Pierson for sending me a copy of this paper.

14. I owe my thanks to Ira Katznelson and Robert Lieberman for comments on this point.
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 271

the specification of the mechanisms channeling it. In the former, this involves
proving causal effect at the choice points; path dependence is established
only when it can be shown that policy change was considered and rejected for
reasons that cannot be explained without reference to the structure of costs
and incentives created by the original policy choice.15 If at least a residue of
path dependence—in addition to the better known factors of interest group
lobbying, public opinion, incrementalism, and so forth—cannot be isolated,
then there was no effect. In politics, two mechanisms engender a path-
dependent effect: “lock-in,” when certain options are rendered wholly unat-
tainable by original choices, and still more so, “disincentive effects,” when
original choices make future options not impossible but deeply unattractive
to policy makers.16
The relationship between path dependence and policy feedback (and, one
could add, related and equally fashionable if imprecise terms such as contin-
gency, punctuated equilibrium, and critical junctures) is often unclear. To
begin with a definition of the latter, feedback effects are independent vari-
ables generated when public policies adopted at one point in time have a
causal influence on political actors and political options at a later time; public
policies are both a dependent variable at time t and an independent variable at
time t + 1 (Krasner, 1988, p. 72).17 In this vein, Pierson (1993) has identified
feedback effects as instances in which “policies produce politics,” when they
“themselves [are] politically consequential structures” (p. 597).
For the purposes of analytical clarity, it is useful to view path dependence
as a particular type of positive feedback effect. When policy at one point lim-
its choice points at subsequent points, it engenders feedback in the form of
path dependence; to explain how, it is necessary to turn to the cases
themselves.

POLICY FEEDBACK AND COLONIAL IMMIGRATION TO EUROPE

With this framework in mind, what I want to argue is that large patterns of
colonial immigration—a significant part of overall immigration to Europe
15. In qualitative social science, as Berman (1998) argues, determining causality involves
meeting two conditions: “first, establishing a connection between the proposed independent and
dependent variables, and, second, explaining why this connection exists—showing precisely
how the independent variables influence the dependent one” (p. 18). Also see Hansen and King
(2001, p. 242).
16. See Arthur (1988) on lock-in as a particular time of self-reinforcing, or path-dependent,
effect; and David (1985) on how QWERTY locked in as the standard keyboard over other, more
efficient, keyboards.
17. The particular interest in public policies as causal variables is one of the features distin-
guishing it from the broader school of historical institutionalism, which examines a wider range
272 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

and thus the development of multicultural Europe—and migration-related

issues were engendered by path dependence and policy feedback. Particular
immigration streams, the size of the overall stream, and particular policy
issues linked with them cannot be understood without reference to loops of
policy feedback engendered by policy decisions taken early in postwar Brit-
ain, France, and Germany. The next section discusses these instances.

POLICY FEEDBACK IN FRANCE:

THE ALGERIAN NATURALIZATION CRISIS

At the outset of this article, I highlighted a category of French Muslims

who possessed citizenship at birth; there were approximately 83,000 in 1975,
a figure that grew to some 244,850 by 1986. In the United States, such inci-
dents would be unremarkable, as U.S. nationality law is based on ius soli, or
citizenship at birth. France, by contrast, has based its nationality law since
1889 on double ius soli, or citizenship at the third generation (a child born of
an alien born in France is French at birth). In light of the French policy’s
expressed aims, this numerical outcome is alone puzzling.
It also had other direct consequences, of which three are relevant. First, as
Algerian independence was only gained relatively recently and through mili-
tary conflict, many Algerians, and above all their parents, viewed the attribu-
tion of French citizenship as an offense against their identity (Sayad, 1987).
The offense was exacerbated by the inability of the immigrants or their par-
ents to decline French citizenship (Weil, 1995, pp. 164-167, 1997, p. 11).
Second, the attribution of French citizenship to Algerians created a crisis of
competing loyalties. Because Algeria subscribes to the doctrine of perpetual
allegiance (Algerian citizenship cannot be renounced), third-generation
Algerians born in France were dual nationals obligated to fulfill military ser-
vice in both countries. The military service exigency, and the attribution of
French citizenship more generally, led to Algerian accusations of neocolo-
nialism. The issue was not resolved until France and Algeria negotiated an
accord in 1983 allowing dual nationals to complete their military service in
either country (Sayad & Gillette, 1976, pp. 111-112). Finally, and most
important, the issue was fodder for Jean Marie Le Pen’s Front National, an
openly racist party18 proposing the expulsion of all non-European immi-

of institutions—according to the most influential definition, “the formal rules, compliance pro-
cedures, and standard operating practices that structure the relationship between individuals in
various units of the polity and economy” (Hall, 1986, p. 19).
18. In the summer of 1996, Le Pen stated during an interview that Blacks were inferior to
Whites, and that most of the French believed this. See Le Monde, September 17, 1996.
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 273

grants from France.19 Easier access to French nationality and exceptions on

military service (considered until recently as central to republican citizen-
ship) would have been the seeds of nationalist and ultranationalist outrage in
themselves, but the issue was all the more emotional because some Algerians
made no secret of the fact that French citizenship was of purely instrumental
value, a means to avoiding expulsion (Sayad, 1987, p. 172).20 To further incite
ultranationalist anger, Algerians came from the country that was an integral
part of France and had torn itself from the national womb, and the majority of
them were Muslim, which is viewed by many on the Right as incompatible
with the obligations of republican citizenship. Although one cannot know the
degree to which this increased support for the Front National (which peaked
at around 15% nationally),21 the party put the issue at the center of its cam-
paign, adopting the slogan “Être français, cela se mérite” (To be French, you
have to deserve it) (Brubaker, 1992, chap. 7).22
The Algerians’ grant of citizenship a generation early, and the conse-
quences it engendered, resulted from a feedback effect created by the inter-
section of two unrelated laws: the 1851 law on double ius soli and the status
attributed by French law to Algeria. Since 1851, double ius soli has been a
foundation of French nationality law;23 since 1889, the automatic attribution
of citizenship could not be declined (Brubaker, 1992, p. 140). After 1830,
when the French acquired Algeria, it was defined not as a colony (such as
India for the United Kingdom) but as a constituent part of the French nation;
as Martinique is a part of France today, so was Algeria until 1962. Before
Algerian independence in 1962, this meant nothing. Following independ-
ence, it became a powerful triggering mechanism. In the years after inde-
pendence, a large number—some 500,000 between 1962 and 1965 alone—of
Algerian migrants arrived in France. French law continued to view Algeria as
a constituent part of the French nation until 1962, an opinion that was both

19. On Le Front National, see Mayer and Perrineau (1989) and Schain (1994). It is some-
thing of an irony that the issue was first taken up by the Left and extreme Left and then later by the
extreme Right. For the Left, the issue was partly one of allegiance but really one of military ser-
vice; for the Right, the reverse was true.
20. Such individuals are referred to as français de papier or français sur le papier.
21. To be clear, I am of course not arguing that the whole phenomenon of the Front National
can be explained with reference to path dependence; it is rather that the path-dependent effect of
nationality law—leading to the automatic attribution of citizenship at the first rather than second
generation—handed the racist Front a further stick with which to beat ethnic minorities in
France.
22. On the Front National’s support in the 1980s, see Schain (1987).
23. The Article was 19.3 of the Code Civil (Code de la Nationalité) but is now Article 23.
Article 24 gives the child who is born of only one French parent the right to repudiate French
nationality. See Code (1993, p. 13). On the 1851 reform, see Brubaker (1992, pp. 93-94).
274 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

legally correct and passionately held, especially on the Right. The result was
that the children born in France of parents themselves born in Algeria essen-
tially skipped a generation; they were French at birth (Lagarde, 1996, p. 314).24
As a result, they were insulated from the (unsuccessful) repressive measures
enacted by France in the early 1970s and were the source of the three crises—
of loyalty, dual citizenship, and the far right—that emerged in the 1980s. The
Algerian issue in French politics was thus a function of the legal status of
Algeria, following the triggering mechanism of Algerian independence,
feeding back onto the 1889 nationality law.

PATH DEPENDENCE AND POLICY FEEDBACK IN BRITAIN:

THE KENYAN ASIANS’ CRISIS

In 1968, the United Kingdom faced the most divisive immigration crisis
since the war. Asians, the victim of Africanization policies that swept East
Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, were being driven out of Kenya.25 They
arrived in the United Kingdom in ever-larger numbers, and, under massive
criticism, the British government introduced legislation blocking their
arrival. The decision was considered the basest, most racist taken by any Brit-
ish government (Steel, 1969, Preface). It was bitterly attacked by migrant
organizations in the United Kingdom (“Hasty Law Makes Bad Cases,” 1968;
“A Shameful and Unnecessary Act,” 1968). The European Commission on
Human Rights condemned it as a violation of the European Convention on
Human Rights; Anthony Lester, a human rights lawyer involved in the draft-
ing of U.K. legislation against racial discrimination, claims to this day that
the legislation was the most shameful ever passed by a British government
(private correspondence). If there was a moment when British migration pol-
icy appeared to be trapped in a downward spiral of racism and populist
appeasement, it was 1968.
Except, as the British government argued (Callaghan, 1987, pp. 214-
215),26 the Asians were not supposed to have had the right to enter the United
Kingdom. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, which ended all free
entry from the Commonwealth, was meant to apply to Asians as to all colonial/

24. Algerians were automatically French at birth from 1962 to January 1, 1994, and have
been again since March 4, 1998. Between 1993 and 1998, following the Pasqua law, they were
French at birth if their parents had lived in France for 5 years. The pre-1993 provisions have been
restored by the socialist/communist/green coalition, elected in 1997, through the Guigou law.
25. I use the term Asian as it is used in the British literature: to refer to individuals from the
Indian subcontinent.
26. Callaghan was the Home Secretary who enacted the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of
1968, blocking the Asians’ entry.
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 275

Commonwealth immigrants (who had had free entry until then). Their ex-
emption reflected the path-dependent consequences of legislation adopted in
1948 combined with the feedback effects of 1962 legislation.
In 1948, the British government adopted a definition of citizenship
encompassing “colonial subjects” and Britons under the same scheme: Citi-
zenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC). Colonial migrants
could enter the United Kingdom freely until 1962 and did so as CUKCs. In
that year, the British government, following a popular reaction against colo-
nial immigrants, ended the right of entry. Given that CUKC had outlived its
usefulness, the logical thing to do would have been to replace this citizenship
with a British citizenship for Britons and some other legal status for colonial
migrants. The British government appointed a committee to examine this
option, but the committee rejected it for two reasons. First, reforming the
1948 scheme, which linked the still-substantial empire, would be too compli-
cated. Second, it would have been resisted by the colonies themselves, which
believed CUKC to be a superior, or at least less patronizing, status than colo-
nial subjecthood. Deciding, on the basis of this sort of cost-benefit analysis,
that the 1948 law was too complicated to overhaul—that is, following path
dependence exercised through incentive effects—the government instead
based immigration control on the issue of passports. If a passport was issued
under London’s authority, it was free from immigration control; if it was
issued under the authority of a colonial governor—in Jamaica, Hong Kong,
or Uganda—it was subject to control.
This fateful decision, determined by the path-dependent consequences,
led in conjunction with the independence of African states to the Asians’
release from immigration control. At independence, some 200,000 Asians,
fearing African reprisal,27 did not take or were denied local Kenyan citizen-
ship, remaining CUKCs. Under normal circumstances, this would have
meant nothing. In the context of the 1962 immigration control scheme (con-
ditioned by the 1948 law), its consequences were profound. Passports issued
pre-independence under the authority of the colonial governor in Kenya were
issued post-independence under London’s authority (as the colonial gover-
nor was no more). As a result, they were immediately and unintentionally
free from the 1962 controls; the conditions for the 1968 crisis were in place.
Had the United Kingdom not passed the 1948 act, the control of immigration
would not have required a mechanism based on the authority with which
passports were issued (rather than the possession of a passport itself); had the
United Kingdom not adopted this mechanism, the Asians would have had no

27. Many Africans bitterly resented the Asians because they were wealthy middlemen whom
the former believed to be exploiters and authors of their relative poverty.
276 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

right to enter the United Kingdom.28 In the first instance, the 1948 act engen-
dered a path-dependent effect by narrowing the range of policy options avail-
able in 1962. In the second instance, policy feedback exacerbated the crisis,
as the Asians would have had no right to enter the United Kingdom on the
basis of any other mechanism.

PATH DEPENDENCE IN GERMANY: ASYLUM SEEKERS

In the 1980s, German asylum policy was in crisis. Until the 1970s, refu-
gees were largely Vertriebene (expellees from Eastern Europe) and
Übersiedler (Germans who crossed the frontier between the two states), with
a smaller number of Aussiedler—“ethnic” Germans from the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe (Halfmann, 1997, p. 260). These individuals were not
considered refugees at all, but Germans claiming a right to their citizenship;
in the decade after 1951, approximately 3.5 million arrived in West Germany
(Hoffmann-Nowotny, 1978, p. 89).29 Other asylum seekers (mostly from
Eastern Europe) were welcomed—as they were across Europe and the United
States—as refugees from Communism. In the 1980s, the situation reversed
itself. With the most liberal asylum laws in the Western world, Germany
became a magnet for refugees and economic migrants from all corners of the
poverty-stricken and war-torn globe. The number of arrivals surpassed
100,000 in 1980 and was double that figure by 1990. By 1985, 45% of all asy-
lum applications in Europe were made in West Germany (Joly, Kelly, &
Nettleton, 1997). By 1990, a united Germany received more than 50% of the
applications: 193,000 people in that year (Ausländerpolitik, 2000, p. 89). In
1992, the country processed 438,000 asylum seekers.
By the mid-1980s, the asylum issue became a political time bomb. Severe
pressures at the Länder and local level, where the asylum seekers were inte-
grated, led to regional calls for an end to the historical right. The government
first responded to these pressures through bureaucratic fine tuning: Germany
expanded detention of those awaiting decisions, implemented “fast-track”
procedures from countries deemed safe, sped up procedures leading to refus-
als of entry and expulsions, and imposed sanctions on airlines carrying asy-

28. Kenya might have attempted to drive the Asians out in any case, and the United Kingdom
would have faced strong pressure to grant them entry; but the Asians would have had no right to
enter the United Kingdom, and the country would not have been forced to confront the singularly
divisive decision of stripping its citizens of an extant right in the full gaze of international
opinion.
29. The Aussiedler’s relatively warm welcome ended in the late 1980s, when the number of
arrivals skyrocketed, reaching more than 200,000 per year after 1989. Today, their claim to citi-
zenship is viewed with suspicion by a majority of Germans. See Ohliger and Münz (1997).
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 277

lum seekers without proper documentation (Collinson, 1993, p. 131). In

1991, the Minister of the Interior issued a public call for change:

In the past few years, asylum was invoked not only by politically persecuted
individuals, but to an increasing extent also by aliens who do not qualify for the
status of a person entitled to asylum; they start an asylum procedure only for
the purpose of staying in the Federal Republic of Germany and taking up gain-
ful employment. (Germany: Federal Ministry of the Interior, 1991, pp. 61-62)

Yet the minister’s hands were tied, and the law was not changed until 1993.
Why?
The answer lies in a minor (at the time) decision taken after the war. In
1948, Article 16 of the German constitution (Grundgesetz, or basic law)
included a clause granting the right of asylum to anyone claiming political
persecution.30 At the time, the clause was innocuous. It was part of a postwar
revulsion against the Nazi treatment of minorities and a recognition that Ger-
mans persecuted by the regime had been granted asylum elsewhere in Europe
(Ash, 1993, p. 241; Gibney, 1993, p. 375). It was added at a time when the
German economy (and Germany itself) was only beginning to recover from
total devastation. Most European refugees at the time (displaced persons)
were either Germans themselves31 or direct or indirect victims of Nazi crimes
against Europe; for the latter, Germany would not have been a preferred
choice. Indeed, many Germans themselves tried to claim asylum status to
escape their razed and impoverished country, although their deliberate exclu-
sion from early postwar asylum measures made this extremely difficult
(Cohen, 2000). Few would have predicted that Germany would ever be a des-
tination for asylum seekers.
The fact that the right of asylum was in the German constitution alone
would have militated against its abandonment.32 Amending the German con-

30. “Politisch Verfolgte geniessen Asylrecht.” The official German translation is, “Persons
persecuted on political grounds shall enjoy the right of asylum” (see The Basic Law of the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany, 1977). It should be noted that the right to asylum in domestic law dif-
fers from the right to asylum in international law. In the former, it is a right to receive asylum; in
the latter, it is the right of the state to grant asylum. My thanks to an anonymous referee for draw-
ing attention to this.
31. That is, the some 14 million Germans expelled, in the greatest example of ethnic cleans-
ing in human history, from Germany’s 1937 borders and from elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
32. The German constitutionalization of asylum differed from other countries’, such as
France’s, in a notable respect. Whereas the German provision effectively secured a right of entry
for asylum seekers reaching German territory, France extended the equivalent right only to one
category of individuals: those deemed to have fought for liberty. As it was interpreted, very few
individuals secured asylum through this procedure: journalists in Colombia and Algerians who
278 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

stitution requires two-thirds support in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat,
a threshold that discourages all but those convinced that they will secure bipar-
tisan support for change.33 But the issue also became a cause célèbre for the
Left in Germany—known semipejoratively as Linksliberalen—who are iden-
tified by uncompromising views on military service, Germany’s Nazi past,
the peace and environmental movement, the integration of immigrants, and a
number of other issues over which Germans tear themselves apart every few
years.
The result of both was an institutional constraint on Germany’s ability to
operate an asylum policy in line with the rest of Europe and domestic public
opinion. In limiting the German state’s ability to restrict asylum, and in
engendering an unexpected and unwanted policy result—the acceptance of
hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in the 1980s alone—the 1948 basic
law engendered path dependence.

CONCLUSION: THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

In sum, a path-dependent account explains both particular categories of

immigration (colonial) and the variance within one category (asylum seek-
ers). In the German case, literally hundreds of thousands of individuals—
who are now permanent residents, active participants in economic and politi-
cal life, and the source of both political opportunity and opposition—were
able to immigrate to Europe because of the path-dependent consequences of
an early postwar choice. In the French case, two 19th-century laws—on
nationality and the status of Algeria—triggered, following independence and
postwar immigration, a series of domestic political crises. In Britain, the
Kenyan Asians would have had no legal right of entry without the combined
feedback effects of 1948 and 1962 legislation, the former of which had little if
anything to do with immigration. These feedback loops (1948 with 1962 in
Britain; 1832 with 1889 in France) engendered crises that would not other-
wise have materialized. Somewhat more formally, the British/French citizen-
ship regimes and the German constitution, because of their rigidity, served as

fell outside the Geneva Convention because they were persecuted by nonstate actors. See Weil
(1997, pp. 51-56).
33. A similar structural disincentive exists in the United States. The fact that ius soli, citizen-
ship by birth, is entrenched in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution renders it extremely
difficult to end, despite widespread opposition against the automatic grant of citizenship to the
children of illegal immigrants to the United States. As in Germany, the constitutional provision
was unrelated to migration; it was instituted to ensure that the children of freed slaves automati-
cally acquired U.S. citizenship. On this, see Schuck and Smith (1985).
 Hansen / THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS TO EUROPE 279

independent variables that led to easier access to citizenship (France) and

unexpected or unintentionally generous rights of entry (the United Kingdom,
Germany) (the dependent variables). The process was path dependent in that
the original policies proved difficult to reverse or modify, leading to these
policy results. The results—greater access to citizenship and to the countries
themselves—in turn triggered a series of secondary results (in order of sever-
ity): the destabilization of the Labour Government in the United Kingdom;
severe local pressures and far-right opposition in Germany; and crises of loy-
alty, military service, and the far right in France. In all cases, however, the
feedback/path-dependent effects were nested in a larger causal story—which
cannot be developed here—about decolonization, European reconstruction,
and postwar labor shortages; they were thus powerful intervening variables.
Another way of putting this is to suggest that citizenship and constitu-
tional regimes displayed—as predicted by path dependence—a stickiness
that left them unprepared for rapidly changing postwar population move-
ments. This stickiness led directly to larger population movements than
would otherwise have been possible (the United Kingdom, Germany) and/or
higher naturalization rates than would have otherwise been possible (France,
the United Kingdom) and, in turn, to migration-related political crises (the
Algerian naturalization crisis, the Kenyan Asians’ crisis, and the German
asylum crisis). This stickiness might have affected other immigration
schemes; governments’ failures to rotate workers before the 1970s decisions
granting them residency rights meant that missed (expulsion or rotation) pol-
icies had feedbacks as well. But the feedback effect in these three cases was
especially strong. Without attending to the path-dependent effects of citizen-
ship/constitutional regimes, these fundamental features of postwar European
politics remain unexplained.
The account offered here has implications for the dominant globalization
and embedded realist theses. It creates serious difficulties for the former. It is
true, as globalization theorists argue, that all three nation-states have had dif-
ficulty satisfying their—and their publics’—desire to reduce immigration
and to avoid particular patterns of migration. Yet these limits had nothing to
do with an emergent human rights regime or international economic integra-
tion. They rather reflected the domestic structure in which politics occurs: the
rules governing citizenship and the constitution demarcating power and
responsibility in a democratic polity. As such, the account draws on a decade
of insights realized in the historical institutionalist literature and incorporates
them into the study of immigration, an area in which political scientists
express verbal interest but, with few exceptions, do little work.
The account is broadly consistent with the insights of the embedded realist
thesis, in that it highlights the central importance of domestic institutions in
280 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / April 2002

limiting sovereignty. The argument should thus be viewed as a supplement,

not a direct challenge, to embedded realism, although the account has impli-
cations for it. Embedded realists have explained “self-limited sovereignty,”
as Joppke (1999) calls it, with reference to the dynamic variables of judicial
politics and the political process. The incentive structure faced by politi-
cians—concentrated benefits and diffuse costs—biases them in favor of open
admissions policies despite public opposition. Once individuals enter the
country, even in a temporary status, the courts intervene to make the status
more secure. These are, to be sure, essential elements of the immigration pol-
itics and public policy. Yet a complete understanding requires attending to
more stable, but equally influential, structures that have engaged the interest
of students of politics from the discipline’s foundation over a century ago: the
rules of citizenship and the nation’s constitution itself. Through a complex
interaction, they contribute independently to admissions levels, to the ease of
imposing restrictions, and to the politics of immigration itself. Although this
might appear at first blush unremarkable, the cases above illustrate how these
effects are often realized against the preferences of publics and governments.
Politics and policy are not only structured by institutions, as historical
institutionalists argue, but constrained by them. The distinction is a fine one,
but it suggests that the development of politics and policy is paradoxically
frustrated by the very institutions constructed to sustain the political process.

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Randall Hansen is a tutor and fellow in politics at Merton College, University of Oxford.
He has published on citizenship, forced and voluntary migration, and asylum. He worked
with Patrick Weil on a 2-year German Marshall Fund project resulting in two volumes.
He is currently working with Desmond King on a history of eugenics and with Matthew
Gibney on an encyclopaedia of migration in the 20th century.