Project

The European Left and Postwar Immigration

Program

Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars

Department

History

Location

For residence at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science during academic year 2010-2011

Abstract

This project examines how leftist intellectuals, political parties, and grassroots organizations in Germany, Britain, and France have wrestled with questions of "difference" raised by the arrival of millions of migrants after 1945. It provides a history of the European Left's engagement with race and immigration and explains why some leftists have increasingly come to doubt the viability of multiethnic coexistence. Ultimately, this project traces the roots of an urgent problem confronting contemporary European society: the growing perception across the political spectrum that Muslim immigrants of diverse national origins constitute a fundamental threat to liberal democracy.