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N EW T O P IC S I N A P P L I E D P H I L O S O P H Y
Series Editor
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
This series presents works of original research on practical issues that are not yet well
covered by philosophy. The aim is not only to present work that meets high philosophical
standards while being informed by a good understanding of relevant empirical
matters, but also to open up new areas for philosophical exploration. The series will
demonstrate the value and interest of practical issues for philosophy and vice versa.
N I L S HO LT U G
1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 12/10/21, SPi
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Nils Holtug 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021941222
ISBN 978–0–19–879704–3
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797043.001.0001
Printed and bound in the UK by
TJ Books Limited
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 12/10/21, SPi
Contents
Preface ix
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Immigration, Integration, and Social Cohesion 1
1.2 Methods, Principles, and Facts 6
1.3 Overview of the Book 16
PA RT I I D E N T I T Y, S O C IA L C O H E SIO N , A N D J U S T IC E
vi Contents
PA RT I I I M M IG R AT IO N
PA RT I I I I N T E G R AT IO N
7. Nationalism 197
7.1 Integration and Community Conceptions 197
7.2 The Claims of Nationalism 199
7.3 The National Identity Argument 201
7.4 Nation-building Policies and the Requirements of Justice 205
7.5 Theorizing the Causality of a National Identity 209
7.6 Empirically Testing the National Identity Argument 215
7.7 Do National Identities Promote Social Cohesion? A Danish Study 217
7.8 National Identities in Scandinavia 219
8. Liberalism 221
8.1 Liberalism and Community-building 221
8.2 Liberal Tensions 223
8.3 A Rawlsian Theory of Social Cohesion 225
8.4 Indirect Institutional Effects 227
8.5 Indirect Distributional Effects 229
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Contents vii
References 275
Index 299
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Preface
My interest in social cohesion slowly emerged in the early years of the new
millennium, as I noticed that debates about immigration and integration were
increasingly framed as debates about such cohesion. Immigration was (and is)
perceived as a threat to national identities and to the ties that bind together citi-
zens, and integration policies were (and are) considered instruments to promote
social cohesion under conditions of diversity. One thing that struck me about this
new framing was that the relation between immigration, national identity, and
various aspects of social cohesion was probably rather complex. Another thing
that struck me was that this complexity was not reflected in political debates
about immigration, or in the policies that were devised on the basis of them. In
fact, political debates about immigration and social cohesion seemed to me full of
gratuitous claims, where it was seldom specified what was meant by ‘social cohe-
sion’ and very little evidence was provided for claims about how immigration
would drive down social cohesion, or for how particular integration policies,
including nation- building policies, would strengthen such cohesion in the
citizenry.
This book is the culmination, so far, of my work on the politics of social cohe-
sion, for which I acquired an interest back in the early 2000s, but only began to
work on several years later. I am grateful to the Danish Council for Independent
Research for giving me a Sapere Aude Top-researcher grant to fund my work on
this project. Likewise, for comments on the book, some of the chapters, or talks in
which chapters were presented, I am grateful to Elisabeth Anderson, Chris
Armstrong, Richard Arneson, Gustaf Arrhenius, Keith Banting, Linda Barclay,
Ben Bradley, Karen Nielsen Breidahl, Simon Caney, Joe Carens, Roger Crisp,
Peter Thisted Dinesen, Paula Casal, Sarah Fine, Marc Fleurbaey, Andreas
Føllesdal, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Gina Gustavsson, Joe Heath, Ulf Hedetoft,
Iwao Hirose, Roland Hsu, Birgitte Scheppelern Johansen, Klemens Kappel, Eszter
Kollar, Kristian Kongshøj, Will Kymlicka, Gerald Lang, Linda Lapina, Christian
Albrekt Larsen, Patti Lenard, Kasper Lippert- Rasmussen, Christian List,
Catherine Lu, Sune Lægaard, Andrew Mason, Jeff McMahan, David Miller, Per
Mouritsen, Morten Ebbe Juul Nielsen, Kieran Oberman, Serena Parekh, Phillipe
van Parijs, Martin Lemberg Pedersen, Tim Reeskens, Mathias Risse, Clara
Sandelind, Andrea Sangiovanni, Merlin Schaeffer, Garbi Schmidt, Shlomi Segall,
Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, Raymond Taras, Elizabeth Theiss- Morse, Lars
Torpe, Simon Turner, Eric Uslaner, Peter Vallentyne, Annamari Vitikainen,
Daniel Weinstock, Andrew Williams, and Matthew Wright.
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x Preface
1
Introduction
The Politics of Social Cohesion: Immigration, Community, and Justice. Nils Holtug, Oxford University Press.
© Nils Holtug 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198797043.003.0001
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2 Introduction
citizens are part of a common political project, which again serves as a basis for
an allegiance to the polity that transcends ethnic, religious, and other differences.
Of course, while often such worries are phrased as worries about immigration,
it is usually particular groups of immigrants that are considered problematic for
social cohesion. Thus, these worries do not typically extend to German engineers
who find employment in the UK or French economists who get university jobs in
the USA. Such worries are usually confined to non-Western immigrants who are
considered culturally different and very possibly an economic burden to the state.
In the case of Europe, it is in particular Muslim immigrants who are considered a
threat to liberal democracies and to social cohesion (Modood 2007: 12). Indeed,
slightly more than 50 per cent of Europeans hold either that no Muslim migrants,
or only a few, should be allowed entry (European Social Survey 2014: 6). This is
not to say that these worries pertain only to Muslim or more generally non-
European immigrants; consider, for example, debates over Roma immigrants in
various European countries and Eastern European immigrants in the UK.1 Nor is
it to say that these worries necessarily pertain to all non-Western immigrants;
consider, for example, Japanese computer programmers who go to work for IT
companies in Australia, Europe, or the USA. And in fact, Western states generally
rely on immigrants, Western or non-Western, to fill shortages on the labour mar
ket and for skills and entrepreneurship. For example, in the USA in 2016, 40 per
cent of firms on the Fortune 500 list were either founded by at least one immi
grant, or by a descendant of an immigrant (New American Economy 2016).
Public policies and debates reflect a desire to promote social cohesion in
response to challenges perceived to be due to diversity. Indeed, following the turn
of the millennium, it is no exaggeration to speak of a ‘social cohesion turn’ as
regards the framing of questions relating to immigration (as I argue in Chapter 2).
More specifically, the desire to promote social cohesion is reflected in both immi
gration policies that aim to control the number of immigrants or composition of
the immigrant group and in integration policies that aim to promote a national
identity that may unify citizens, including immigrants, and thus create the ties
that bind and underpin social cohesion.
As regards immigration policy, a particularly prominent idea is that immigra
tion tends to increase ethnic diversity, where ethnic diversity drives down social
cohesion as it undermines a sense of having a shared identity, where a shared
identity underpins important aspects of social cohesion such as trust, belonging,
cooperation, and solidarity. Furthermore, the idea is that this impact on social
cohesion will have a number of undesirable consequences for markets, social
1 The European Social Survey (2014: 6) shows even less support for the immigration of Romas than
for Muslims, with more than 60 per cent holding either that no Roma migrants, or only a few, should
be admitted.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 23/09/21, SPi
interaction, democracy, and the welfare state. A particular version of the argu
ment relies on what has been labelled the ‘heterogeneity/redistribution trade-off
hypothesis’ (Banting and Kymlicka 2006: 3), according to which we need to
choose between diversity and egalitarian redistribution, that is, we cannot have
both, at least not at high levels. This trade-off has also been referred to as the
‘progressive’s dilemma’ (Goodhart 2004). And yet another way of framing it is as a
conflict between liberty (more specifically freedom of movement) and equality.
The argument concludes that immigration needs to be (severely) restricted.
As regards integration policy, again the idea is that social cohesion relies on a
shared identity, where this identity may be fostered or maintained by implement
ing policies that strengthen it. Often, such policies aim to strengthen a shared
identity at the national level, but may also target for example municipal identities.
At the national level, which is what I am mainly concerned with, policies aim to
define what it means to be British, French, or German and to secure allegiance to
the peoples and polities in which these national identities are embedded. Indeed,
the question of the importance of identity for social cohesion plays a prominent
role in this book.
More generally, in this book I consider in greater detail the significance of
social cohesion for social justice or, more specifically, the significance of immi
gration in liberal democratic societies for social cohesion and for the implemen
tation of socially just policies. My main focus is on distributive justice and
especially egalitarian redistribution, which, as pointed out above, is increasingly
perceived as threatened by diversity and its impact on social cohesion (see, for
example, Miller 2004). The aspects of social cohesion I primarily focus on are
trust and solidarity, where political theorists have generally considered these par
ticularly important social conditions for justice (Kymlicka 2001; Miller 2006;
Rawls 1971). Redistribution requires solidarity with other members of society
and it requires trust in other people to likewise comply with the requirements of
justice—for example, that they fill in their tax returns honestly. Very roughly, I
argue that the effects of immigration on social cohesion do not need to com
promise social justice and that core principles of liberty and equality not only
form the normative basis for just policies of immigration and integration, as a
matter of empirical fact, they are also the values that, if shared, are most likely to
produce the social cohesion among community members that provides the social
basis for implementing justice.
Assessing the significance of immigration for justice requires both an empir
ical understanding of the effects of immigration on social cohesion, and of social
cohesion on redistribution, and a normative framework from which to assess
these effects in terms of justice. Bertrand Russell (1945: xxiii) once said that ‘social
cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never succeeded in enforcing cohesion
by merely rational arguments’, thus highlighting the significance of both political
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4 Introduction
philosophy and the social dynamics of the communities in which cohesion is (or
is not) instantiated. And indeed, the present work is as much a book on social
science as it is a book on political philosophy. As regards justice, my argument is
based on principles of liberty such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
freedom of movement, and, in particular, a principle of equality. This reflects the
independent plausibility of these principles, for which I argue in Chapter 4, but
also the fact that the concerns for redistribution motivating the very worries
about social cohesion I discuss in the book are very often based on liberal con
cerns about equality.
I have sometimes encountered an objection to the sort of project I embark on
here, which comes from progressive scholars who are basically sympathetic to the
values I defend, but who are nevertheless somewhat sceptical when it comes to
inquiries into social cohesion in a context of diversity. They believe that the con
cern with social cohesion is part of a conservative and/or nationalist agenda that
aims at exclusion, the closing of borders, and striping immigrants of their rights,
or at least that it will be used to this effect. And indeed, much of the recent inter
est in social cohesion has come from conservative or nationalist politicians, the
orists, and think tanks.
Likewise, and sometimes in tandem with the above concern, some theorists
have more theoretical worries about the categories used in at least some social
cohesion research. These worries pertain to the construction of a native ‘we’ and
an immigrant ‘they’, where these groups are supposedly well-defined and homo
geneous. Furthermore, such worries may pertain to what is considered a prob
lematic methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Schiller 2003), where the
nation is assumed to be a primary source of identification and a primary object of
inquiry (cf. Kymlicka 2015: 2). An objection is therefore that people’s identifica
tions and loyalties are likely to be far more diverse, and indeed include both local
and transnational communities.
I believe that there is nevertheless good reason to engage with research on
social cohesion in diverse societies. First, it would simply be unwise to ignore the
social basis for just institutions and not least for more demanding such institu
tions, pursuing egalitarian redistribution, insofar as we want these institutions to
thrive. As I shall return to in Chapter 3 (Sections 3.2–3.4), social cohesion is
important for a large number of political, economic, and social goods. Since we
cannot simply assume that social cohesion will be unaffected by current and
future societal changes, including not least the impact of globalization, it would
be unwise not to try to understand the basic mechanisms behind the emergence,
maintenance, and strengthening of such cohesion. Second, nation states are some
of the most important distributors of rights and advantages, which makes it
important to study the social basis for these benefits at the national level. Third,
there is indeed reason to sometimes challenge both the construction of groups
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6 Introduction
As transpires from the above, this book engages with both normative and empir
ical issues. It engages with normative issues of what justice requires in the field of
migration and with empirical issues such as whether social cohesion can be sus
tained in diverse societies, as well as whether social cohesion depends on shared
values, for example in the form of a shared national identity. In many cases, the
normative and empirical issues are intertwined, such as in the question of how
best to promote social justice under conditions of diversity, where specific mech
anisms of in-group bias and out-group prejudice may be in play, and of whether,
and if so how, immigration should be regulated in light of the challenges it may
pose for social cohesion.
However, the issue of how to integrate (relevant) empirical work in normative
reasoning has led to a great deal of controversy in recent political theory, not least
when it comes to the significance of psychological (or motivational) feasibility
restrictions on theories of social justice. Since the significance of such empirical
concerns are central to the present investigation, I now consider in some detail
how to integrate them, which involves distinguishing between different levels of
political thinking. I first outline my own views on the content of, and relation
between, these levels and the implications this has for the methodology I employ.
Then I turn to the question of how this account differs from views and methods
employed by a number of other political theorists, including Rawlsian ideal the
orists, political realists, and contextualists. This also allows me to respond to vari
ous objections.2 For readers who have little interest in these methodological
issues, this section can be skipped.
Like Gerald Cohen (2003; 2008: ch. 6), I believe that, at the most basic level,
and in a certain sense, normative political philosophy is purely normative. That is,
at this level, principles and their justification rely only on purely normative claims
and so not on any factual ones (except insofar as the latter invoke purely norma
tive facts, if any such facts exist). Let me exemplify this with the two principles of
equality I primarily engage with in the book. One is luck egalitarianism, accord
ing to which it is unjust if, through no responsibility of their own, some individ
uals have lower levels of advantages than others. This principle does not rely on
any empirical assumptions about, for example, the nature or sociality of human
beings. It does, of course, rely on accounts of responsibility and of what advan
tages are, but these will themselves be normative accounts.
Likewise, luck egalitarianism relies on a specification of what individuals are.
Here, it may be suggested it implicitly relies on an empirical fact in that it has
2 This section, then, primarily deals with the relation between normative and empirical claims
when theorizing about justice. For a more general account of methodology in political philosophy, see
Holtug 2010a: 7–14.
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restricted scope and applies only to, say, human beings (or sentient beings), where
its scope is thus restricted because of certain capacities that human beings (or
sentient beings) have, such as the capacity for autonomy (or for sentience).
However, the relevance of the fact that human (or sentient) beings are capable of
autonomy (or sentience) relies on a purely normative claim that explains its rele
vance for equality, such as for example the claim that (only) autonomous (or sen
tient) beings are entitled to such equality. It is because only autonomous (sentient)
individuals are entitled to equality that the scope of luck egalitarianism is
restricted to autonomous (sentient) beings (such as human beings). Thus, there is
something about autonomy (sentience) that makes it appropriate that those who
possess it are, in the manner specified in the principle, equals.
The other egalitarian principle I engage with is equality of opportunity, accord
ing to which it is unjust if individuals do not have equal opportunities for acquir
ing a range of goods, including offices and positions, income, education, health
care, and for practising their religion and culture, that is, if they do not have the
same prospects for doing so regardless of their lot in the social lottery. Here, the
social lottery refers to the different social backgrounds into which children are
born and that impact their access to opportunities. This principle introduces both
a number of goods (offices and positions, income, etc.) and a particular mechan
ism (the social lottery) that should not be allowed to determine unequal pros
pects for acquiring these goods, where both the goods and the mechanism reflect
specific modes of social organization. Thus, the principle reflects certain empirical
facts about how human beings (under certain conditions) organize themselves and
what, given such organization, are important goods for people to have access to.
Nevertheless, ultimately, the relevance of these goods must be justified in
purely normative terms. For example, income is an important distributive good
because, and under circumstances in which, it promotes people’s basic interests
and/or autonomy (the possibility of leading a life according to one’s own plans
and commitments). Thus, the significance of income is justified in terms of nor
mative ideals such as the value of interest-fulfilment and/or personal autonomy.
Likewise, while the social lottery describes a specifically human source of inequal
ity, the relevance of this source is that, as Rawls puts it, it is arbitrary from a moral
point of view, that is, it is a source of inequality that does not reflect people’s
responsible agency or what they can be said to deserve. Thus, the significance of
the social lottery is justified with reference to normative concerns about the role
of responsibility and deserts.
Thus, there is a level of normative political thinking that relies only on norma
tive claims, and so not on (non-normative) facts. Let me emphasize that I am not
arguing that normative claims at this level need to be very general in nature. In
fact, they may be as particular as one likes, as long as they are universalizable
(Hare 1963: ch. 3). This also implies that my proposed view is compatible with
Rawls’ method of reflective equilibrium, according to which principles of justice
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8 Introduction
and considered moral judgements about cases are mutually supportive. I do not
challenge the view that judgements about particular cases serve to justify norma
tive principles (and vice versa). Of course, at this level of political thinking, such
judgements must either be purely normative or, to the extent they invoke empir
ical facts, these facts are ultimately relevant for purely normative reasons. So if,
for example, we hold that states have an obligation to cater for refugees, this may
be taken to provide some support for a particular principle that has this implica
tion, for example, a principle of humanitarianism. Now, the judgement that states
have an obligation to cater for refugees is purely normative. But suppose that, if
asked to motivate this judgement, we point to the vulnerability of refugees. This is
at least in part an empirical statement. Nevertheless, arguably, for the vulnerability
of refugees to be relevant, there must be some purely normative reason why this is
so, for example, that there is a pro tanto moral reason to cater for the vulnerable.
I should also emphasize that I am not suggesting that, at this basic level of nor
mative political thinking, empirical matters, or empirical cases, cannot play a role
in developing principles. Reflection on such cases may, for example, allow us to
focus on normative aspects we might otherwise have missed. For example, reflec
tion on the plight of migrants in destination societies may make us more sensitive
to the importance of, say, being able to practise and express one’s culture and reli
gion on an equal footing.
This, of course, does not mean that empirical claims have only a limited role to
play in our political thinking, because there are after all other levels than the one
described above. Often, we want to answer normative questions of what to do in
particular circumstances, where these circumstances are characterized by facts,
or at least factual claims. For example, given our best assessment of the impact of
various forms of diversity on different aspects of social cohesion, what should our
immigration policies look like? To answer that question, we need to know some
thing about the impact of diversity on social cohesion. However, given our assess
ment of the facts, it is our (purely) normative principles that ultimately determine
how we should respond to them. Nevertheless, we need both facts and values to
answer questions of this kind.
Sometimes, there will be limitations on the extent to which we can bring about
the outcomes we have most reason to bring about, given our normative prin
ciples. Limitations of this kind have various sources, including uncertainty about
the outcomes of actions and policies that are available to us as well as psycho
logical dispositions and sociological and economic dynamics that make it difficult
to realize the outcomes that, according to our principles, would be best. To exem
plify, some would argue that in-group favouritism and out-group prejudice make
it difficult to uphold social justice, and in particular egalitarian redistribution, in
a citizenry that is too diverse. Likewise, such psychological mechanisms could
make it difficult to fully implement cosmopolitan principles of the kind I defend
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