Beyond Binaries and Polarization? Rethinking Pluralist Inclusion in Immigrant Nations

Abstract

Empirically, the papers in this special issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics focus on what lies in between the statuses of insider and outsider, namely the often-overlooked conditionality and temporality of inclusion, the messiness of policies aiming to foster ethnic pluralism, the uneven distribution of attitudes among the members of so-called ethnic groups. They strive to overcome binary shortcuts and the ideological polarization that have recently infested intellectual and political discourse and provide answers to the following questions: Who is conditionally included/excluded in comparison to whom, and for what reasons? What does this conditional inclusion/exclusion entail in terms of pluralist rights and possibilities vs. assimilationist requirements? How does this inclusion/exclusion affect the cultural and economic wellbeing of both the (im)migrants and the receiving society? Drawing on these empirial examples and framing them conceptually, this introductory paper shows that while binaries are a staple in the study of nationalism and ethnic politics, they also give rise to theorizations of ethnocultural pluralism.