Introduction

What is Europe to do about immigration? Mortality is up and fertility is down, resulting in an ageing population and a steadily shrinking workforce in most European countries (United Nations Population Division 2000). Until the invention of robots paying taxes, the policies required to preserve the kind face of European capitalism are either painful or unfeasible. Are Europeans prepared to have more children, work until the age of seventy-five, pay steeper taxes, or accept reduced retirement and health-care benefits? Because immigrants tend to be younger than the native-born populations of European countries and to have larger families, an active immigration policy seems an obvious response to the dictates of demography and economy (Joppke 2002:259). And there is no shortage of people clamoring to get in. Nevertheless, since the 1970s, most European governments have tried to “stem” rather than to “solicit” migrants (Joppke 2002; but see also Freeman 1995).

For all the talk of post-nationalism and globalization among scholars, the movement of people across borders remains less politically acceptable than that of capital or goods. As this chapter will show, among European publics enduring cultural loyalties seemingly trump the economist's rational calculus in which workers are infinitely substitutable. The current phase of European integration is supposed to produce common immigration and asylum rules. Yet most EU leaders have rejected proposals to establish a Union-wide immigration quota as a response to the numbers of workers and refugees eager to get in.