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The Cultural Politics of

Nation and Migration
Steven Vertovec
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity,
37085 Gottingen,
Germany; email: vertovec@mmg.mpg.de

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2011. 40:24156

Keywords

First published online as a Review in Advance on

June 29, 2011

culturalism, policies, state institutions, representation, synecdoche,

migration

The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at

anthro.annualreviews.org
This articles doi:
10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145837
c 2011 by Annual Reviews.
Copyright 
All rights reserved
0084-6570/11/1021-0241$20.00

This article is part of a special theme on

Migration. For a list of other articles in this
theme, see http://www.annualreviews.
org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-an40

Abstract
Immigrant cultures are routinely posed as threats to national culture.
Particular understandings of immigrant and national cultures underlie cultural politics. Culturalismconceiving cultures as reied, static,
and homogeneous across bounded groupsimbues these understandings. Representations of immigrant and national culture are mutually
constituted in policies, state institutions, the media, and everyday perceptions surrounding key categories such as borders, illegality, and the
law. Furthermore, coupled with a popular or commonsense structuralfunctionalism that sees all cultural values and practices as inherently
interlinked, many modes of cultural politics are contextually stimulated
by anxieties about cultural loss. At critical junctures, certain representations gain powerful roles in cultural politics through synecdoche, when
specic symbols stand for an integrated set of cultural attributes. Examples include Muslim head scarves in France and the ground zero
mosque in the United States. Anthropologists can usefully mitigate
culturalism and contribute to public debates by promoting more processual and distributive understandings of culture.

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INTRODUCTION

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Immigrants erode the national culture.

This is a view commonly voiced throughout
most migrant-receiving countries. The idea
that immigrants represent a cultural threat
to the nation is, to be sure, just one in a
battery of familiar anti-immigration arguments
(including those contending that immigrants
steal jobs, exploit public services, and pose
security risks). What is clearly of interest to
anthropologists is not only the fact that, here,
culturethe stuff of professional interestis
being invoked, imagined, and judged, but
also that civil servants and politicians reect,
draw on, or manipulate popular notions of
national versus alien culture to develop policies
and manage state institutions (which, in turn,
serve to reinforce popular notions of national
and alien culture). In these ways, we can say
that issues surrounding migration stimulate,
manifest, and reproduce cultural politics.
Anthropological studies concerning migration offer ways to understand culture as
a political issue and politics as a cultural
eld. Over the past decade, anthropologists
have increasingly examined how migrants
cultures (variably conated in the public
sphere with religion, identity, ethnicity, or
nationality) have been conceived as objects of
political concern. Many have also examined
processes through which political reactions
to immigrants and other minorities cultural
differences are structured by particular images,
narratives, and symbols of national culture.
Such responses are not always just rightwing or racist reactions. For example, during
a town-hall debate about a proposed mosque
in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, one participant objected to Islam because I just think
its not America (Ghosh 2010, p. 14); conversely, reacting to the upsurge in anti-Muslim
sentiment surrounding New Yorks so-called
ground-zero mosque, the emeritus Roman
Catholic archbishop of Washington exclaimed,
This is not America (Goodstein 2010,
p. A16). Laden with ambiguities (van der Veer
1995, p. 2), the cultural politics of nation and
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Vertovec

migration can go in many directions. Hence,

as Coutin (2003) points out, migrants are often
both celebrated and denigrated for weaving
diverse cultural heritages into the national
fabric (p. 508). Eriksen (2006) similarly notes
that politicians and other public gures often
praise the immigrants for enriching the
national culture. At the same time, they may
worry about arranged marriages or Islam as
impediments to national cohesion (p. 15).
Anthropologists are in a good position to
explore and unravel the tangled dynamics of
cultural politics concerning nation (an imagined people and their purported culture within a
border), nation-state (the institutions of governance associated with a nation), and migration
(the movement of individuals across borders).
Although, like sociologists and cultural studies
scholars, they take great interest in interrogating the ways culture is constructed and reproduced in public discourse, anthropologists
have combined conceptual or discursive analyses with ethnographic observations of practices
through which cultural concepts are enacted in
social relations or state institutions, and with
evaluations of their everyday social, economic,
and political outcomes. The current article reviews a number of such anthropological works
over the past ten years.
In a review of ethnographies at the end of
the 1990s, ONeal (1999) considered the development of migration anthropology. At that
time, she observed, the key concerns in migration anthropology regarded concepts such as diaspora, public culture, family structure, gender,
and especially, transnationalism. ONeal called
for more research into the emergence of hybrid national cultures. Furthermore, she underlined the need for better accounts of the role of
the state in dealing with immigrant and refugee
populations and their participation in and exclusion from debates on the form and content
of national culture (1999, p. 224). It is this latter call that seemed to have been picked up, as
the bulk of this article attests.
The following review is not meant to
represent an exhaustive account of the recent anthropology of migration. The eld is

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composed of just too many signicant themes

to attempt such an account within one article.
Over the past decade there has been considerable theoretical development around the study
of migration patterns and processes (e.g., Foner
2005, Glick Schiller et al. 2006, Glick Schiller

& C
aglar
2009); migrant identities (e.g.,
Escobar 2004, Brettell 2007, Linde-Laursen
2010); the so-called second generation (e.g.,
Mair 2002, Kasinitz et al. 2006, Wessendorf
2008); gender and migration (e.g., George
2005, Mahler & Pessar 2006, Merrill 2006,
Donato et al. 2008); migrant diasporas and
transnationalism (e.g., Smith 2005, Brettell
2006, Yelvington 2006, Vertovec 2009); migration, citizenship, and the state (e.g., Hansen &
Stepputat 2005, Gullette 2006, Mandel 2008,
Reed-Danahay & Brettell 2008); migration,
lifestyle, and life course (e.g., OReilly 2000,
Gardner 2002, Benson & OReilly 2009); and
migrant families and networks (e.g., Baldassar
et al. 2007, Charsley 2007, Olwig 2007). Not
surprisingly, across this varied eld there is not
a single, unied anthropological take but rather
very different approaches, concerns, and modes
of analysis (see Brettell 2000, Foner 2003b,
Sanjek 2003, Horevitz 2009, Six-Hohenbalken
& Tosic 2009, Vertovec 2010).
A few years ago in the Annual Review of
Anthropology, Silverstein (2005) noted how
migrants call into question local national
integration and unity (p. 364). In addressing
this question, his piece centers on the racialization of the immigrant category and the
states production of migrants as a problem of
racial difference. The present review, instead,
is concerned with migration and the reication
of cultural difference.

CULTURALISM AND
CULTURAL POLITICS
Vilifying immigrants and their traditions is
nothing new. Immigrants are almost always
seen to be the bearers of an alien culture,
write Zolberg & Long (1999), and, in that
capacity, evoke conjectures regarding their
putative impact on the receiving countrys

self-dened identity and prospective integrity. Although these assessments are often
specious and founded on conceptions of
culture that are implicitly or explicitly ethnocentric, such beliefs do have consequences
(p. 8).
This was evident, for instance, during the
great waves of migration to the United States
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout this period, public concerns
were continuously voiced over the threat that
immigrants posed to an assumed American way
of life (Salomone 2010). However, political discourse at that time was generally not framed
around notions of culture, but rather in terms
of foreign languages, customs, and immigrants
persistent national traits (p. 39).
It is in the latter part of the twentieth century
that public discourse on immigration seems to
have become riddled with explicit references
to culture. This formulation came to entail
a notion of culture as static, xed, objective,
consensual, and uniformly shared by all members of a group (Wikan 1999, p. 62). It is an
understanding of culture that is now commonly
called an essentialized one, also associated with
conceiving culture as reied, bounded, biologized, or inherited. The development of this
kind of thinking on culture was noted in the
early 1980s, when observers called attention to
a new racism through which notions of racial
difference were increasingly concealed inside
apparently innocent language about culture
(Barker 1981, p. 3). The notion of cultural
racism also arose in social science literature
to describe such discourse (e.g., Blaut 1992),
as did parallel critiques of culturalismthe
assumption of common beliefs and practices
within a discrete ethnic groupespecially
within contemporary policies of multicultural
ism (Alund
& Schierup 1991, Baumann 1996,
Vertovec 1996). In her salient article on cultural fundamentalism, Stolcke (1995) also underlined the tendency to construe, through a
reied notion of culture, immigrants as posing
a threat to the national unity of host societies.
Especially with regard to immigrants,
anthropologists increasingly noticed how
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culture had become all too utterable

(Strathern 1995, p. 16) and loose on the
streets (Wikan 1999, p. 57). Hannerz (1999)
called this the rise of culturespeak: whereas
culture in the past was probably a term
with mostly consensual and positive overtones,
it now very often shows up in contexts of
discord (p. 394). The intensive use of this
word, Auge (1999) suggested, is itself a
piece of ethnological data (p. 39). Indeed,
Hannerz (1999) called for scrutinizing the
uses of culture and related concepts, and the
assumptions underlying these uses, in public
life (p. 396).
Attention to such discourse has subsequently
been sharpened. For example, in Italy, where
migrants were once purely economic subjects, Pratt (2002) observes that now they are
purely cultural subjects and isolated from mainstream politics (p. 34). In Norway, Gullestad
(2004, 2006) traced the emergence and increasingly widespread use of cultural concepts in
public discourse, including the words fremmedkulturell (culturally alien) and fjernkulturell (culturally distant) in discussions surrounding immigrants and minorities. In Denmark, Hervik
(2004) assesses a widespread culturalist construction of unbridgeable differences (p. 247)
between immigrants and Danes.
It is important to note that culturalist
or essentialist thinking is not just a characteristic of the conservative Right. Strathern
(1995) emphasized that [i]t may be very
useful for right-wing political language,
but such politics also draw on usages more
generally current. . . . [D]ogmas of cultural
difference . . . suit a whole spectrum of positions . . . they suit both right-wing and
left-wing platforms. . . . Different political
regimes speak in its common language (p. 16).
Accordingly, such culturalist thinking has
been interrogated in Peros
` (2007a) work on
immigration policies and the political Left
in Italy, and in Wessendorf s (2008) study of
second-generation as well as anti-immigrant
movements in Switzerland. Moreover,
Wessendorf acknowledges that culturalist
discourses surrounding migrants have been

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around for a long time, but she demonstrates

how their contents continue to be shaped over
time by social and political contexts.
On local, national, and global scales, shifting ideas of culture have been prompted not
least through emergent modes of transnationalism (Vertovec 2009) and the dismantling of
xed identities in the wake of new global mobilities (Urry 2007), contrasting forms of social
organization, changing varieties of capitalism,
and heightened nancial risks associated with
the darker sides of globalization (Appadurai
2006, p. 3). Mamdani (2004) has linked the end
of the Cold War and 9/11 to the rise of Culture
Talk, which assumes that every culture has a
tangible essence that denes it, and it then explains politics as a consequence of that essence
(p. 17).
Changing social and political circumstances
are not just the shapers, but also the drivers of
culturalism and cultural politics. For many people, processes of transformation prompt reactionary searches for explanation, if not blame,
and essentialist concepts of culture seem to provide this. Culture offers a way of classifying features of a runaway world and a model
that seems to make sense. What is loose on
the streets is not just culture, Grillo (2003)
suggests, but anxiety about culture: cultural
anxiety (p. 158, emphasis in original). Akin
to moral panic, cultural anxiety, per Grillo
(2002), is a concern about cultural identity and
cultural loss, the fear that someone is robbing
us of our culture; that authenticity will be destroyed (p. 23). Migration represents one key
mode of transformation that triggers just this
sort of response.
Many of these matters were noted by
Stolcke. The problem of immigration is
construed, however, as a political threat to national identity and integrity on account of immigrants cultural diversity, she said, because
the nation-state is conceived as founded on a
bounded and distinct community which mobilizes a shared sense of belonging and loyalty predicated on a common language, cultural traditions, and beliefs (Stolcke 1995,
p. 8). Yet another feature persists: Such

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culturalism works so effectively not just because of the bounded and static assumptions
that comprise it, but also because of their
workings within what we might call popular, everyday, or common-sense structuralfunctionalism. That is, like the core postulate of earlier social science (from Durkheim
through Radcliffe-Brown and Parsons)a postulate now critiqued out of the anthropological
canonpopular structural-functionalism sees
all values, cultural practices, and social institutions as parts of an integrated whole, a cohesive
system based on necessary interdependence and
equilibrium of its parts. If one part is perceived
to be vulnerable or expunged, the integrity of
the entire system is considered to be in danger.
The tighter the cultural cohesion is deemed to
be, the higher the anxiety is when one part is
threatened.
Despite the often dubious claim that anthropologists have been unwittingly complicit in
creating culturalism (e.g., Stolcke 1995, Wright
1998, Wikan 2002), structural-functionalism is
not anthropological rocket science and certainly has not needed anthropologists to place
it in the public mind. Like Herders notions
of peoplehood as the sum totals of language,
tradition, and geography, ideas of culture and
society as composed of integrally linked components appear to the lay observer as self-evident.
Moreover, it is a view recurrently reinforced by
representations that are rampant in the public
sphere. For instance, structural-functionalism
is inherent in current public discourse and policy, especially in Europe, concerning parallel
societies, immigrant integration, and community cohesion (Schiffauer 2008, Hess et al.
2009, Vertovec & Wessendorf 2010). It is, indeed, the logic of cultural politics.

CULTURE AND NATION

Stolcke (1995) perceived that culturalist
assumptions are implicit in modern notions
of nationhood. These are seen most clearly
through anthropological assessments of nationalism (e.g., Llobera 2004, Fuglerud 2005,
Gullestad 2006) and neo-nationalism (e.g.,

Holmes 2000, Gingrich 2006, Gingrich &

Banks 2006). In contrasting older and newer
forms of nationalism in Europe, Gingrich
(2006) explains that immigration and multiculturalism are not the sole issues driving the
us/them divide at the core of nationalism
(p. 199); current nationalist convictions are
also underpinned by matters of race, gender,
postcolonialism, and overarching trends such
as Europeanization. Especially in nationalisms
newer forms, cultural anxiety about threatened
identity impels cultural politics.
But imagining the nation in terms of
us/them cultural divides is not unique to nationalists. It is often present in ordinary thought
and practice. This is clear by way of the forms
of banal nationalism importantly described by
Billig (1995): recurrent practices, routines,
events, discourses, images, and experiences that
inculcate the nature of, and sense of belonging
to, a particular nation. This, usually cultural,
notion of nation becomes ingrained in consciousness, taken for granted, common sense. It
is a reinforced imagined sameness (Gullestad
2002), despite the fact that the presumed common national identity may be based on a rather
vague or ambiguous content. One of its most
signicant premises, however, is that we know
who we are and what constitutes our sameness, precisely because we know who we are
not and what constitutes our difference from
others (Banks & Gingrich 2006, p. 9).
Conceptions of the nation, Gullestad (2006)
stressed, entail certain social imaginaries
imbuing how people think about categories,
collectivities, and social values they feel afliated with or distanced from. A key device
for constructing the national imaginary is the
conceptual triad identities-borders-orders (or
IBO model; Albert et al. 2001, Kearney 2004,
Kearney & Beserra 2004, Vertovec 2009). In
this formulation, (a) some sense of cultural
identity is presumed to characterize a people;
(b) this identity/people is believed to be
contiguous with a territory, demarcated by
a border; (c) within the border, laws and a
moral economy underpin a specic social and
political order. This order, which is conceived
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to be different from orders outside the border,

both draws on and reinforces the sense of
collective identity. As described in the sections
below, IBO is legitimated and reproduced
through a system of narratives, public rituals,
representations and institutions, informal
social relationships, written and unwritten
regulations, and expectations of civility and
public behavior (Schiffauer et al. 2004). The
IBO triad, as conceived in popular thought
and political discourse, is also grounded in
structural-functionalist logic (again, if one part
is threatened, so is the whole). IBO further
claries the ways culture and politics are intertwined in the idea, and workings, of the nation.

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INSTITUTIONS AND POLICIES

A number of state institutions and policies,
drawing from particular formulations of cultural politics, act as guardians and reproducers of the nation. Foremost among these are
border regimes that regulate immigration (De
Genova 2002, Vila 2003, Heyman 2004, Coutin
2007, Forschungsgruppe Transit Migr. 2007,
Camacho 2008, Donato et al. 2008, LindeLaursen 2010, Radu 2010, Riccio & Brambilla
2010).
In one of the most comprehensive approaches to the topic, Kearney (2004) saw the
border as a composite geographic, legal, institutional, and sociocultural structure and process (p. 131). He proposed that a major task of
anthropology is to explore how the geopolitical and cultural aspects of borders are related.
Kearney saw border regimes as having two main
missions: rst, the ability of borders to regulate unequal exchanges of economic value affecting class positions of migrants, and second,
the power of borders to shape the cultural construction of the identities of persons who are
encompassed and excluded by them, who cross
them, and who are otherwise dened by them
(p. 133).
Echoing Kearneys processual approach, the
IBO model, and Malkkis (1992) analysis linking the coproduction of borders, the naturalized identity between people and place and
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the national order of things, Brambilla (2010)

proposes that through borders,
What emerges, indeed, is the link between
the creation of a precise order of the world,
on the one hand, and the discursive differentiation between we and they that is created, or better imagined, through the process
of b/ordering. Thus, borders are places where
both identities and alterities are continuously
invented and re-invented. (pp. 7576)

Yet the ordering mission of borders is not

served just by the institutions on the state
boundary itself. In Border Games, Andreas
(2009) demonstrates how public perception is
powerfully shaped by the images of the border which politicians, law enforcement agencies, and the media project (p. 9). Andreas
draws attention to the idea of the border as a
kind of political stage and border enforcement
as an audience-directed ceremonial practice
reafrming moral boundaries (compare Nevins
2002).
To extend this metaphor, policies represent
the scripts for the political stage. Policies comprise sets of classication, rules and rationales,
procedures, decision-making strategies, and authorizations for the use or denial of resources
concerning, in this case, immigrants and ethnic
minorities. These features invoke, and are organized around, particular knowledge claims
and policy narratives concerning problems
and appropriate interventions (Boswell et al.
2011, p. 2). Policies comprise an important,
although still understudied, eld for anthropological inquiry. In probing the possibilities
for an anthropology of policy, Shore & Wright
(1997) point to structures and language through
which policies operate. These comprise important elds of research for anthropologists because policies not only impose conditions, as if
from outside or above, but inuence peoples
indigenous norms of conduct so that they themselves contribute, not necessarily consciously,
to a governments model of social order (p. 6).
One such classicatory device is illegality.
It is a critical policy category reinforcing any

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nations IBO model, but one that is not a priori. De Genova (2002) underlines the historical specicity of distinct congurations of
illegality (p. 424) that are constituted by
national immigration regimes, whereas Inda
(2006, p. 2) highlights how particular assemblages of knowledge and political rationalities
frame the category and government interventions surrounding illegal immigrants. However assembled, these formal, legal identities
coexist and interact in complex ways with informal, popular patterns of sociocultural classication in a process that is integral to the overall
dynamics of bordering (Kearney 2004, p. 134).
Authors providing ethnographic accounts of
symbolic and structuring processes surrounding borders, immigration policy, institutional
practices, and their outcomes include Fassin
(2005) on state responses to the Sangatte
asylum-seeker reception center in Calais; Adler
(2006) on the role of ethnic proling within the
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agency; Fuglerud (2004) on the way Norwegian
immigration caseworkers intertwine nationalism, immigration policy, and projections of cultural difference; Riccio (2007) on social workers essentialization of migrants; Blommaert
(2009) on the totalizing of language (p. 425)
and its equation with the nation in state
engagements with asylum seekers; Donato and
her colleagues (2008) on the gendered effects
of intensied border enforcement strategies;
and Coutin (2003) on the rhetoric of mass
naturalization ceremonies and how these rites
produced citizensand the nation (p. 514).
A repeated message concerning policy and
cultural politics seems to be, whether on the
Right or the Left, people who want to express
themselves in public about immigration have
to engage with the emerging conventional
frame of interpretation (Gullestad 2006,
p. 302). Gullestad demonstrated that, in
Norway, the development of this frame had its
own emphases and timetable based on national
history and specic events. Rivera (2009) outlines parallel processes in the construction of
culturally politicized discourses of immigration
in Italy, where Giordano (2008) investigates

the effects of the specic frame or label victims

of human trafcking (p. 588). In Germany,
Ewing (2006) suggests, the prevailing frame
of interpretation assigns individuals to membership in an essentialized cultural category,
generating stereotypes such as the Turkish
woman as victim (p. 285). Even hybridity and
hyphenation get reied in this frame, Ewing
observes, becoming notions consciously used
by German-Turkish culture-producers.
Just like the policies and institutions concerning immigrants and the border, symbolic
and conceptual structuring is evident in multiculturalism or policies and institutions for accommodating and managing cultural diversity.
In this sense, as Varenne (1998) puts it, multiculturalism or cultural diversity arise less as a
result of cultural difference and much more as a
cultural process that produces particular forms of
difference within a historical and institutional
context. . . . Diversity is never the simple end
product of substances living together in some
geographical space (pp. 2728, emphasis in
original).
In most Western contexts of immigration,
however, there is no single apparatus or
comprehensive corpus of policy addressing
migration-driven cultural difference (Vertovec
& Wessendorf 2010). Instead, one nds
ramshackle, multifaceted, loosely connected
sets of regulatory rules, institutions and practices in various domains of society that together
make up the frameworks within which migrants and natives work out their differences
(Freeman 2004, p. 946). Such a patchwork is
found across national, regional and urban contexts, where the specicities of these various
scales of governance have a profound impact regarding how multiculturalism is practiced and
performed (Nagle 2009, p. 15). Examining national models for the incorporation of Islam and
Muslims, for instance, Bowen (2007a) discovers
internal tensions and contradictions within
each national model; he nds the differences
in governance over time within any one country
have been at least as important in structuring
Muslims lives as have been the relatively stable
elements that serve to distinguish one country
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from another (p. 1004). For these reasons,

Grillo (2002, p. 3) maintains that multiculturalism entails a politics of recognizing difference
which must be contextually located in identiable social and political processes, that is to say
ethnographically (compare Turner 1993).

REPRESENTATIONS AND
SYNECDOCHE

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Particularly surrounding immigrants, cultural

politics is epitomized by what Grillo (1985)
long ago called the representation of problems
and the problem of representation. He writes,
Representation here refers to perception
and conception, an ideological dimension. But
if there is representation of problems, there
is also a problem of representation. The
point is this: If the situation of immigrants
is represented as problematicperceived,
conceived, analyzed, and nally handled in
terms of the problems that immigrants pose
or are believed to experienceand these representations are taken into the institutional
system through which policies are formulated
and implemented, then we must examine who
presents the representations, that is, whose
view is represented in a political sense, by
what means, and how evaluated. (p. 2)

Representations, including images, symbols,

concepts, and language, all create the frame of
interpretation, noted above by Gullestad, that
imbues both public perception and policy development (compare Hallam & Street 2000).
Again, the framewhich is produced on various scalescan be almost inescapable, even for
those who want to achieve a positive portrayal
of culture and difference.
This was evident when Zinn (2002) scrutinized Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), billed
as Italian televisions rst multiethnic variety show. The shows creator-hosts intended
to promote multiculturalism in good faith but
ended up reproducing negative stereotypes.
This result was due to the use of culturalistdifferentialist images, also evident in Italian
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school materials, in which ethnos is equated

with nation-states and cultural predilections are
presumed to be shared and unchanging within
hardened groups. Zinn (2002) concludes, to a
large extent, it is just as difcult to get across
an anthropologically informed notion of culture and human difference to people who declare themselves tolerant as it is to counter an
unabashedly racist perspective (p. 206).
Who should represent immigrants? Obviously, the immigrants themselves. However,
as Kosnick (2007) nds in a study of Turkishlanguage broadcasting in Berlin, migrants
efforts to represent themselves are deeply
problematic as various, competing voices
struggle with categorical identity labels as
signiers of difference. Dened as Germans
stereotypical Other, Kosnick (2007) observes
that Turkish cultural production in Germany
is forced to be continuously concerned with
transforming, challenging, or conrming
migrant identity labels (p. 5).
At critical junctures that arise nationally for a
number of reasons or in response to signicant
events, public debate often condenses around
specic representations that serve as emblems
of larger political categories, national models,
and cultural sets of meaning. Examples include
the head scarf affair in France, the murder of
Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, the London bombings in the United Kingdom, and the
ground-zero mosque in the United States.
Such events and emblems become mirrors for
reecting assumptions of us and them, the
nation and its others, acceptable and unacceptable cultural difference, good versus
bad diversity. Bowen (2007b) describes these
as key moments in a countrys life at which
certain anxieties and assumptions come to the
surface, when people take stock of who they are
and of what kind of social life they wish to have
(p. 2). Core symbols are employed to justify
arguments, rationales, and decisions. In these
moments, Bowen calls for an anthropology of
public reasoning in order to see connections
among political philosophy, public policy, and
common sense by studying how people deliberate about an important issue (p. 3).

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In this manner, Salomone (2010) explains

how, since the nineteenth century, language
has intermittently been a lightning rod for
concerns surrounding foreigners in America.
With a comparative perspective on why
Islam is like Spanish, Zolberg & Long (1999)
examine public discourse concerning the place
of Islamic religion in European societies and
Spanish language in the United States: as
major foci of tension and contention, Islam
and Spanish are metonyms for the dangers that
those most opposed to immigration perceive
as looming ahead: loss of cultural identity,
accompanied by disintegrative separatism or
communal conict (p. 5). Islam and Spanish
resemble one another across contexts because
each feeds fantasies of a malignant growth
that threatens national unity (p. 7).
Rather than metonyms, it may be better to
consider how such images or symbols operate
by synecdoche, as pars pro toto, that is, certain
symbols which are part of something come to
stand for the whole, more inclusive set. With
regard to culturalist assumptions and cultural
politics, the tighter the integrity of a presumed
culture is assumed to be through popular
structural-functionalism, the more a particular
cultural political discourse can draw on a
specic representation (in Grillos sense) as
signifying a threat to the whole. Synecdoche
thus helps explain, for example, the extraordinary symbolic weight of head scarves in France,
where bits of cloth came to stand for certain
fears and threats at several specic moments
(Bowen 2007b, p. 4). Hence, in Bourdieus
view, the explicit questionShould wearing
the Islamic voile [headscarf ] be accepted at
school?hides the implicit questionShould
immigrants of North African origin be accepted in France? (quoted in Bowen 2007b,
p. 246). Synecdoche and its references are
inherently contextual: As seen by van der Veer
(2006), the fact that the clash with Muslims in
European societies commonly centers on the
headscarf does not imply that that issue means
the same thing everywhere. In Holland I think
it reects not so much [as it does in France]
a perceived challenge to the secularism of the

state as a perceived rejection of sexual liberty

and consumer values (p. 124).
One major domain of increasing symbolic
contestation is the law. In debates about
whether and how immigrants cultural differences should be taken into account by legal
systems (e.g., Shah & Menski 2006, Foblets
et al. 2009, Grillo et al. 2009), various representations are agged as key or core to a
groups cultureoften with anthropologists
engaged as experts in court (e.g., Good 2008,
Blommaert 2009). Relatedly, similar formulations arise around the cultural defense, or
how the intentions of defendants are rendered
knowable by reference to essential elements
of their culture (e.g., Renteln 2004, Demian
2008, Foblets & Renteln 2009). In such ways,
culturalist claims . . . have become a familiar
rhetorical element in contemporary rights processes (Cowen et al. 2001b, p. 9).
Muslim women exemplify another example of culturalist representation in contemporary cultural politics (Abu-Lughod 2002, Ewing
2006, Moors & Salih 2009a). In much public
discourse, womens bodily performances are
crucial markers of national belonging and function as boundary markers between communities (Moors & Salih 2009b, p. 376). Female
circumcision, constraints on Muslim women in
relation to the public space, and restrictions
on Muslim girls dress are some of the main
representational tropes of this kind. Congruent, stigmatized images of Muslim men are also
emerging across many societies of immigration (Ewing 2008, Potts & Kuhnemund
2008).

But perhaps it is the immigrant familyreplete

with stereotypes of arranged or forced marriage, patriarchy, domestic violence, and honor
killingsthat is the most prevailing representation in debates about cultural difference, its
threats, and the limits of diversity (Eriksen
2007, Grillo 2008b, Bhandar 2010).

CONCLUSION
The cultural politics of nation and migration are based on, and composed of, contextually constructed concepts of culture that set
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terms of debate and shape instruments of policy. Such representations across various public spheres perpetuate a nonimmigrant worldview with which immigrants have to contend.
Of course, contemporary immigration patterns
do not necessarily produce the cultural patterns
and fault lines that cultural politics often depicts. This was clear in Wimmers (2004) study
of immigrant neighborhoods in Swiss cities,
where cultural distance or racial barriers,
which are often cited as the most formidable
obstacles to integration, play only a subordinate
role (p. 10).
The disjuncture between culturalist discourse and common intergroup interactions is
also reected in a growing literature on everyday multiculturalism (Colombo & Semi 2007,
Prato 2009, Vertovec 2010), especially in urban
contexts of superdiversity (Vertovec 2007, Wise
& Velayutham 2009, Blommaert 2010). Indeed,
the city currently signies the foremost setting for the anthropology of migration because
this is where the meeting of cultural politics
discourses, policies, and institutionsare most
clearly contested by, or reproduced through,
peoples actual meanings, perspectives, and
practices. We have much to learn comparatively
because cities represent very different contexts,
scales, and processes with regard to migrants

(Brettell 2003, C
aglar
2010, Glick Schiller &
2011), as demonstrated by recent ethnoC
aglar
graphies in New York (Foner 2010), Miami
(Stepick et al. 2003), Bologna (Pero` 2007a),
Barcelona (Pero` 2007b), Frankfurt (Bergmann
& Romhild
2003), and London (Wessendorf

2010).
Still, despite their own complex experiences
of others in diverse settings, Hannerz (1999)
appreciates that many people tend all too easily to fall back on at least mild versions of
cultural fundamentalism, as a readily available,
easily comprehensible default solution; something that appears more like common sense
(p. 399). Grillo (2003) also notices that often enough, rightly or wrongly, people really
are concerned about their culture, and often
enough their ideas are grounded in essentialism (p. 160), whereas Brumann (1999) writes,

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whether anthropologists like it or not, it appears that peopleand not only those with
powerwant culture, and they often want it
in precisely the bounded, reied, essentialized,
and timeless fashion that most of us now reject. Moreover, just like other concepts such
as tribe, culture has become a political and
judicial reality, requiring any attempt to authorize more deconstructed notions to reckon
with considerable institutional inertia. (p. S11)

Baumann (1999) also describes a commonplace understanding, which regards national

cultures, ethnic cultures, and religious cultures
as nished objects. . . . In this view, culture,
whether national, ethnic, or religious, is something one has and is a member of (pp. 8384).
He recognizes that for many people there is
comfort in this view of having culture, but
there are also presumed advantages in terms
of making predictions of how others might
think and behave. Baumann contrasts this with
making culture, a dynamic, antiessentialist
conception or processual view of culture that
acknowledges how values and practices are continuously reshaped by renewing activity, dialectically from above and below. Correspondingly,
Grillo (2008a) proposes that anthropologists
should publicly eschew homogeneous, reied,
static and unchanging notions of culture and
emphasize its dynamic, heterogeneous, changing, contested and transformative nature. If the
social sciences can deliver this message then
they may provide a much-needed check on what
in recent times has become a dangerous othering of immigrants and their descendants
(p. 32). Hannerz (1999) also advocates promoting a processual view of culture, while developing our critique of old and new varieties
of essentialism. To the extent that anthropologists are recognized as having any intellectual
authority with regard to understandings of
culture, such views and criticisms can be one of
our contributions to public debate (Hannerz
2006, pp. 27879; compare Hannerz 2010).
Such a public shift in basic thinking about
culture is not just possible; it has begun. It
is plainly noticeable within UNESCO, which

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for decades worked with an understanding of

culture that presumed static, homogenizing,
territorialized entities and artifacts in need of
preservation. At one time, Eriksen (2001,
p. 128) utterly criticized UNESCOs longstanding partition of the world into cultures,
each of which belongs to a particular group of
people, associated with their heritage or roots
(p. 131). Now, after contentious internal debates, the organization has changed its perspective (and with it, one might say, its cultural
politics). The latest UNESCO (2009) World
Report portrays culture as a complex array of
overlapping forms, markers, and meanings in
constant ux. The new Report states,
It is increasingly clear that lifestyles, social
representations, value systems, codes of
conduct, social relations (inter-generational,
between men and women, etc.), the linguistic
forms and registers within a particular
language, cognitive processes, artistic expressions, notions of public and private space
(with particular reference to urban planning
and the living environment), forms of learning
and expression, modes of communication and
even systems of thought, can no longer be
reduced to a single model or conceived in
terms of xed representations. . . . [W]hereas
the Organizations longstanding concern has
been with the conservation and safeguarding
of endangered cultural sites, practices and

expressions, it must now also learn to sustain

cultural change. (UNESCO 2009, pp. 45)

If UNESCO can change its spots, so might

other sources of cultural politics.
In addition to a shift from a culturalist view
to a processual one in public discourse, anthropologists might work toward loosening popular
structural-functionalist notions of cultural integrity (just as structural-functionalism was critiqued within the profession; compare Kuper
1983). If such a premise could be dispelled, the
powerful synecdoche of certain representations
in cultural politics would be lessened. One way
of doing this would be to promote the public
understanding of a distributive view of culture,
recognizing the ways meanings and meaningful external forms are differentially spread
over a population and its social relationships
(Hannerz 1992, p. 7).
Processual and distributive understandings
of culture will certainly shift the terms of reference surrounding the cultural politics of nation
and migration. Instead of pronouncements
that this is not America, we might see more
statements such as that in a New York Times
editorial: America has stood proudest when
it dared to stretch the denition of who we
are (Editorial 2010, p. A22). Cultural politics
of some sort will always remain in the public
sphere; underlying concepts of culture need
not remain unchanged.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any afliations, memberships, funding, or nancial holdings that might
be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go to Bruno Riccio, Boris Nieswand, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Brit Lynnebakke, John
Bowen, Annekatrin Kuhn,
Therese Funke, Jutta Esser, and Christiane Kofri for their help in

preparing this article.

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Anthropology

Contents

Volume 40, 2011

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Prefatory Chapter
Anthropological Relocations and the Limits of Design
Lucy Suchman p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1
Archaeology
The Archaeology of Consumption
Paul R. Mullins p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 133
Migration Concepts in Central Eurasian Archaeology
Michael D. Frachetti p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 195
Archaeologists and Indigenous People: A Maturing Relationship?
Tim Murray p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 363
Archaeological Ethnography: A Multitemporal Meeting Ground
for Archaeology and Anthropology
Yannis Hamilakis p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 399
Archaeologies of Sovereignty
Adam T. Smith p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 415
A Century of Feasting Studies
Brian Hayden and Suzanne Villeneuve p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 433
Biological Anthropology
Menopause, A Biocultural Perspective
Melissa K. Melby and Michelle Lampl p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p53
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding
of Links Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and
Associated Conditions
Tessa M. Pollard p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 145
From Mirror Neurons to Complex Imitation in the Evolution
of Language and Tool Use
Michael A. Arbib p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 257

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From Hominoid to Hominid Mind: What Changed and Why?

Brian Hare p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 293
The Human Microbiota as a Marker for Migrations of Individuals
and Populations
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello and Martin J. Blaser p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 451
Linguistics and Communicative Practices

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Publics and Politics

Francis Cody p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p37
Ritual and Oratory Revisited: The Semiotics of Effective Action
Rupert Stasch p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 159
Language and Migration to the United States
Hilary Parsons Dick p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 227
The Balkan Languages and Balkan Linguistics
Victor A. Friedman p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 275
International Anthropology and Regional Studies
Central Asia in the PostCold War World
Morgan Y. Liu p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 115
The Ethnographic Arriving of Palestine
Khaled Furani and Dan Rabinowitz p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 475
Sociocultural Anthropology
Substance and Relationality: Blood in Contexts
Janet Carsten p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p19
Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides
T.M. Luhrmann p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p71
Phenomenological Approaches in Anthropology
Robert Desjarlais and C. Jason Throop p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p87
Migration, Remittances, and Household Strategies
Jeffrey H. Cohen p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 103
Climate and Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary
Climate Change
Susan A. Crate p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 175
Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality
of Immigration in Dark Times
Didier Fassin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 213

Contents

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The Cultural Politics of Nation and Migration

Steven Vertovec p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 241
Migrations and Schooling
Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, Tasha Darbes, Sandra Isabel Dias, and Matt Sutin p p p p p p 311
Tobacco
Matthew Kohrman and Peter Benson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 329
Transnational Migration and Global Health: The Production and
Management of Risk, Illness, and Access to Care
Carolyn Sargent and Stephanie Larchanche p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 345
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2011.40:241-256. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
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Concepts and Folk Theories

Susan A. Gelman and Cristine H. Legare p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 379
Migration-Religion Studies in France: Evolving Toward a Religious
Anthropology of Movement
Sophie Bava p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 493
Theme I: Anthropology of Mind
Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides
T.M. Luhrmann p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p71
Phenomenological Approaches in Anthropology
Robert Desjarlais and C. Jason Throop p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p87
From Mirror Neurons to Complex Imitation in the Evolution of
Language and Tool Use
Michael A. Arbib p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 257
From Hominoid to Hominid Mind: What Changed and Why?
Brian Hare p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 293
Concepts and Folk Theories
Susan A. Gelman and Cristine H. Legare p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 379
Theme II: Migration
Migration, Remittances, and Household Strategies
Jeffrey H. Cohen p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 103
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding of Links
Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Associated
Conditions
Tessa M. Pollard p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 145
Migration Concepts in Central Eurasian Archaeology
Michael D. Frachetti p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 195

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Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality

of Immigration in Dark Times
Didier Fassin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 213
Language and Migration to the United States
Hilary Parsons Dick p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 227

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2011.40:241-256. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

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The Cultural Politics of Nation and Migration

Steven Vertovec p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 241
Migrations and Schooling
Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, Tasha Darbes, Sandra Isabel Dias,
and Matt Sutin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 311
Transnational Migration and Global Health: The Production
and Management of Risk, Illness, and Access to Care
Carolyn Sargent and Stephanie Larchanche p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 345
The Human Microbiota as a Marker for Migrations of Individuals
and Populations
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello and Martin J. Blaser p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 451
Migration-Religion Studies in France: Evolving Toward a Religious
Anthropology of Movement
Sophie Bava p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 493
Indexes
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 3140 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 509
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 3140 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 512
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Anthropology articles may be found at
http://anthro.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

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