Winking at the State: social drama and multicultural claustrophobia

Open Access

Abstract

[Extract] The 1950s and 1960s saw the beginning of the end of the European nation state. The European Community, later the European Union, began to eat away at national sovereignty. Immigration programmes started to erode cultural sovereignty. The motive for immigration in some cases was the playing out of the final chapter of European empires. In other cases, immigration marked the beginning of Europe's demographic decline. As local European fertility rates fell below replacement numbers, immigrants made up the difference.