Models of citizenship, political opportunities, and the claim-making of immigrants and ethnic minorities: A comparison of France and Switzerland

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the institutional setting, both cultural and political, for the claim-making of immigrants and ethnic minorities and derive a number of hypotheses regarding variations in the extent, forms, and content of claim-making. The general underlying idea is that the political-institutional setting shapes the modalities of claim-making, while the cultural-institutional setting provided by the dominant definitions of citizenship and by the regimes for the incorporation of migrants affects its content. In addition, models of citizenship determine the space for the presence and intervention of minorities in the national public space. The degree of legitimacy of these groups for participating in the public debates is an important intervening variable in this respect. We confront our hypotheses with data on the collective claim-making by immigrants and ethnic minorities in France and Switzerland for the period 1990-1994. The data are part of an ongoing comparative project on immigration politics, citizenship, and the mobilization of ethnic difference in several West European countries. The method used in this project and in the present paper attempts to integrate protest event analysis and public discourse analysis in a broader framework for the study of the strategic claim-making occurring in the public space.