Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain. By Christian Joppke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 356p. $72.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Abstract

This book will enhance Christian Joppke's growing reputa- tion as one of the most thoughtful commentators on the politics of international migration and citizenship. Immigra- tion and the Nation-State is an impressive cross-national comparison that builds on elite interviews and reanalysis of primary materials, but its chief value is in its bold synthesis and critique of a rapidly growing and highly disjointed secondary literature. Although it assesses a variety of theo- retical concepts, the book is primarily a historically rooted, richly empirical work of analysis and interpretation. Joppke deals expertly with three liberal states with different nation- hood traditions and immigration histories. The United King- dom is distinctive in that it was at once a nation-state and an empire. The United States is the only case of the three in which governments deliberately sought to foster immigration for settlement. Germany was a divided nation whose com- mitment to reunification, embedded in the Basic Law, posed particularly troublesome issues for immigration and citizen- ship policy.