A New Politics? Symposium on Dauvergne’s The New Politics and the End of Settler Societies
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Mireille Paquet |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12798 |
A New Politics? Symposium on Dauvergne’s
The New Politics and the End of Settler
Societies
Mireille Paquet*
ABSTRACT
This Special Issue presents articles that empirically and theoretically explores the central argu-
ments of Catherine Dauvergne’s 2016 book The New Politics and the End of Settler Societies.
This multidisciplinary issue comprises five research articles and a closing commentary from
Catherine Dauvergne, exploring migration-related events that have taken place since 2015. As
a whole, these articles demonstrate the relevance of The New Politics and the End of Settler
Societies to future comparative studies of immigration politics and policies. Contributions to
this Special Issue also confirm policy trends and convergence, as argued by Dauvergne. More
broadly, the selected articles illustrate the analytical and political challenges associated with
imagining research and policies outside of the paradigm of settler societies.
Immigration is often considered a central contributor to the economy, to population growth and to
the identity of Canada, Australia and the United States. Although there are differences, these three
countries define themselves as “immigrant societies,”“societies of immigrants”or “multicultural
societies." In comparative immigration research, this has been expressed by classifying these coun-
tries as “immigrant settler societies”or “traditional societies of immigration”: states that present
themselves as being built on immigration and that have migration at the core of their official
national identity discourses, which also support large international migration programmes.
A classical foundation of comparative migration studies is that settler societies are characterized
by qualitatively different immigration-related policies and particular immigration politics (e.g. Free-
man, 1995; Castles, 1995; Freeman & Birrell, 2001; Joppke, 2005; Castles & Mark, 2009; Schain,
2010; Bauder, 2011; Scheffer, 2011; Alba & Foner, 2014). Compared with other societies—most
notably, Western European states—settler societies tend to have policies that are more welcoming
to immigrants and that support permanent settlement and naturalization. Settler societies are also
seen as more open to experiment, with more elastic notions of national identities and cultures that
are able to include immigrants’experiences and backgrounds, via official policies (e.g. “multicultur-
alism”) and myths (e.g. “melting pot"). Settler states’immigration politics are expected to be not
too salient and to respond to a model of client politics where a limited number of organized groups
benefiting from expansive immigration policy are able to influence governments.
This differentiation has been central to the development of immigration studies as a field but is
also powerful and evocative in national and world politics. As summarized by Dauvergne, “Settler
societies, nations built through extensive migration, and which as a consequence led the world in
*Concordia University, Montreal,
doi: 10.1111/imig.12798
©2020 The Author
International Migration ©2020 IOM
International Migration Vol. 58 (6) 2020
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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