University of Toronto

Graduate Student, Political Science

Thesis Title: Minority Nationalism and Immigration: The Basque Country in Comparative Perspective

About

I am a PhD Candidate (expected completion: May 2012) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.  My research focuses on the intersections of nationalism, immigration and public policy.  In addition to serving as a teaching assistant in the general fields of Comparative and Canadian Politics for numerous years, I will teach a course entitled ‘Nations without States in Europe and North America’ in the summer of 2012 at the University of Toronto.  My teaching interests include Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Immigration Policy in Europe, Canada in Comparative Perspective, Western European Politics, and Contemporary Spanish Politics.

My doctoral thesis, entitled 'Minority Nationalism and Immigration: The Basque Country in Comparative Perspective', examines the question of why a nationalist movement with a history of ethnic exclusion adopted policies in favour of multiculturalism and an inclusive concept of citizenship in response to a wave of immigration in the early twenty-first century.  The impetus for this research came from the voluminous normative literature in the subfield of nationalism that highlights the potential for conflict between minority nationalists and immigrants.  Minority nations define themselves from the larger state by way of distinct cultures and languages.  In a globalizing world, minority nations must contend with an influx of migrants that do not share those languages or cultural traits.  Little empirical work has examined cases with the aim of explaining the outcome, whether that outcome is a policy regime aimed at exclusion or inclusion.  Drawing on fieldwork that included 40 in-depth interviews with party members and civil society actors, I found that globalization renders the traditional building blocks of national identities (e.g. language, culture) less potent.  The main argument I make is that the Basque nationalist movement embraced multiculturalism to present a contrast between its values and priorities and those of the Spanish state, as embodied by restrictive immigration policies and an emphasis on creating a homogenous Spanish identity.  I also found that a strand of marginality theory—the perspective that oppressed groups are more sympathetic towards immigrants—is an important factor in explaining the outcome in the Basque case.  In the concluding chapter, I test the portability of my argument in the cases of Scotland and Québec.  An abridged version of chapter 4 of this thesis has been accepted for publication in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies under the title ‘Immigrants and the Basque Nation: Diversity as a New Marker of Identity’.

My future research plans involve building on the central themes of my dissertation and broadening the focus to examine the links between different forms of diversity and citizenship.  In particular, I plan to study the emergence of regional citizenship in Scotland and Catalonia.  Decentralization in the United Kingdom and Spain has endowed these ‘nations without states’ with the ability to provide immigrants with welfare entitlements such as healthcare and education even if the state does not mandate it.  I plan to track the trajectory of citizenship policies in Scotland and Catalonia and refine the arguments developed in my dissertation to explain the divergent outcomes.