Paul Scheffer, 'Immigrant Nations"

Here is a short excerpt from my review of Paul Scheffer's new book Immigrant Nations which will be published in Ethnic and Racial Studies  in the Spring:

Paul Scheffer (translated by Liz Waters), IMMIGRANT NATIONS, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011, 390 pp., £19.99 (paper).

As Paul Scheffer notes in his Epilogue, this book is the result of many years of discussion, literature review and analysis after the publication in 2000 of his controversial article “The Multicultural Drama” (‘Het multiculturele drama’, in NRC Handelsblad, 29 January 2000).  Those who don’t know of Scheffer’s role as public intellectual in the Netherlands may want to start by reading the Epilogue.  However, this background is not necessary to gain a great deal from what is clearly an in-depth and well researched book on the way that recent immigration is impacting Europe and the U.S. In this book, Scheffer attempts to reconcile the many conflicting forces that influence both the nature of immigrant integration, and the fundamental issue of citizenship in a global society.