The debate on immigration and the crisis of national identity

The legacy of mass labour migration to Europe in the 1960s is a considerable permanent ‘foreign’ population. Now recession and industrial restructuring have cast doubt on that population's economic, social and political legitimacy; simultaneously, the nation state is under pressure from both above and below. Despite historically very different approaches to the role of immigration in Britain, France and Germany, there has emerged a common problem of national identity. Across Europe there remains strong popular attachment to the national cultural identities, and it is this inertia which denies the logic of adaptation and change.