Immigration in Europe - HumanitarianNet - Universidad de Deusto

INTRODUCTION 23…states are an archaic anomaly within the organization of modernsociety, which is based on the principle of non-territorial, functionaldifferentiation. This functional order integrates individuals only incertain specific respects (e.g. as workers, consumers or churchgoers),but never in their totality, thus requiring them to be multiply orientedand allied, and in this sense perpetually flexible and mobile. Statesare an exception to this. They include the individual as a whole andinvoluntarily by ascription at birth, further expecting her to be attachedto just one state among a plurality of similarly conceived states, andnot to change this attachment over a lifetime…..Unlike Schumpeter’sclasses, states cannot afford to be like buses, always full but alwaysfilled by different people (see Schumpeter, 1953, p. 171). (JOPPKE,1998, p. 6).Clearly, what is needed is a trade-off, or balance, between themobility and flexibility which “the organisation of modern society”requires of the individual, and the “sedentariness” which is necessaryfor political life to be organised by the nation-state model. The sameneed for balance is expressed by Hirschman in terms of an oppositionbetween “exit” and “loyalty” (1970, pp. 69-71, cited in JORDAN/DÜVELL, 2003, p. 23). By “exit” he refers to the need for individuals, ina market system, to shop around between different products and firmsto find the one offering the greatest advantage for themselves. Politicalinstitutions, on the other hand, require “loyalty”, if members are to bepersuaded that it is worth their while taking part in collective decisionmaking.Hirschman argued that all kinds of organizations —firms andNGOs as well as states— should try to balance exit…and loyalty…Whatever membership systems evolve or are created in this centurywill face this challenge, and the fate of democracy as a principle ofcollective rule will depend on the achievement of this balance.(JORDAN/DÜVELL, 2003, p. 23).There has, presumably, always been the need for states to achieve sucha “balance”. Pursuing this metaphor, we might say that what is new todayis that the level and intensity of international migration over the past fewdecades, linked to other globalising trends, has pushed the “balancingpoint” to the limit of the scale. Finding a new balancing point, therefore,will involve radical changes in the notions of membership, citizenship andidentity to which we have become accustomed during the triumphantrise of the nation-state to its present position as the dominant politicalorganising principle of the modern world. One example of a small butsignificant step towards the achievement of such a balance is provided