Introduction: The Politics of Immigration

Since the last decades of the twentieth century, new waves of immigration have been transforming both Europe and the United States. In Europe, immigration has produced new multicultural populations that now include large numbers of Muslims who have arrived from Turkey and Africa. In the United States, immigration from the Western Hemisphere and Asia has altered an ethnic mix that had been primarily European in origin. These patterns of immigration, in many ways similar on both sides of the Atlantic, have been related to very different policies on immigration during the past 40 years. Immigration policy in Europe has been relatively restrictive, while policy in the United States has been relatively open.