EpiCenter

The International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship's Quarterly Newsletter
Welcome to numbers 1 and 2 of the Fall/Winter 1997 EpiCenter, the Newsletter for the International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship.

Waters focused on the expe-rience of West Indian immigrants in the United States and related her find-ings to immigration in general and particu-larly as it pertains to U.S. policy. Based on a six year study and 202 in-depth interviews with West Indian migrants to the United States, Waters found that the first generation acclimatized relatively well to its new environment, particularly compared to native born Black Americans. Despite their low skills, first generation West Indians dis-played high motivation, which proved to be well received by the growing service economy. West Indians showed a lack of "racial-ism" or expectation of interpersonal racism and at the same time thereby challenged the entrenched structural racism which charac-terizes relations between whites and blacks in the United States.

However, employers Waters interviewed put the race issue on the agenda in interperson-al relations with West Indians. One white manager interviewed by Waters suggested that a difference in work ethic between American Blacks and West Indians would incline him toward hiring the latter over the former, and he furthermore described this difference as "cultural": If a West Indian sec-retary is more likely than a Black American secretary to serve her white boss coffee, as another interviewee stated, Waters suggests this is because West Indians are able to separate their own self worth from their work and distinguish between class hierarchies and race hierarchies. If West Indians have few skills to offer the labor economy, they nonetheless carry with them the "right" values, such as readiness for hard work, ambition for their children, a priority for education and strict discipline.

Such values intermingle nonetheless with racial ideology widespread in the United States. These first generation West Indian immigrants, despite racism, value America and the dream it promises: freedom, opportunity, material rewards, though they also face many disappointments, such as the realization that money will not buy the level of materialism they want. The biggest disap-pointment, Waters emphasizes, is that the immigrants realize the extent of race discrimination and cannot "forget about race." Waters suggests that interpersonal racism begins to undermine the immigrants' belief that they can tell the difference between incidents which are "racial" in nature and those which are not. Over time, the open-ness and willingness to respond to whites as "individuals" who are not different because of skin color erodes. The suspicion that any individual white one encounters has the potential to react with negative behavior because of the color of the other person's skin begins to shape every encounter between black and white. Interpersonal racism ultimately deteriorates the ability of blacks and whites to ever "forget race"; with the ghosts of past negative experiences influencing current ones.

Finally, the second generation is also influenced by more universal pressures placed on immigrant families, which are largely similar to those that affect poor native families, such as long working hours without adequate child care, materialism among children and the pressures that puts on working parents, and lack of extended family and community support in raising chil-dren. But, more so than the sum of its parts, the story of the second generation concerns the degree to which the class status of par-ents, as well as the identity of youngsters, influences the extent to which the second generation resists and overcomes downward leveling pressures and in the end succeeds. In this respect, Waters' conclusions mesh well with the findings of many other scholars of immigration.

Waters' interpretive assessment of the story of West Indian immigrants and their proge-ny suggests that people with "right values" are defeated by a public policy system and economy that does not give families the resources they need to support those values. Concomitant with ineffective policy are the negative social aspects, particularly in the form of a society with enough structural racial discrimination and ongoing interpersonal racism and prejudice to change those values for some proportion of the population into defeatist and oppositional possibilities. For a long time, Waters argues, conservatives have pointed to the Colin Powells of this world in order to criticize American Blacks. But if Colin Powell's experience applies only to a relatively small percentage of lucky West Indians who come with enough human, cultural and social capital due to their social class origins to resist the downward leveling pressures of American society, then the story of West Indians should lead to very different conclusions and questions.Waters suggests one should not question whether there is a legacy of slavery or past injustice that creates a "dysfunctional" cul-ture among African-Americans that leads to their over concentration among the poor in our society. Rather, one should ask what American society should do right now, every day, in big policy decisions and small interpersonal actions, like clutching your handbag tighter when a black male approaches, that create a spiral of cultural and structural interactions that affect the socioeconomic outcomes of people of color.

Currently, new immigrants from Latin America and Asia face different incorpora-tion experiences. While there is a continual supply of new immigrants, there is a decline or stasis in economic opportunities. Ethnic populations will therefore be heterogeneous on measures of assimilation. Constant replenishment will mean that what it means to be Mexican will be very different for different individuals. People will assimilate out but will be replaced. Ethnic neighborhoods like Little Italy will not shrink, but that does not mean that the same people will stay in them. Important for public opinion, however, is that the demographic reality will appear that they are not assimilating, because the visible aspects of the ethnic group will remain visible. This might also change what it means to be second or third generation.

The following articles are part of two-part project on the situation in the Balkans. The first article, entitled The Unmixing of Peoples, was written by the ICMEC Director and Professor in Exile Dr. Arisitide R. Zolberg. The second contribution, Transforming Mental, Not Material, Borders was formulated by former-U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia (1989-1992) Warren Zimmerman and appears in his current publication Origins of a Catastrophe (copyright 1996 by Random House, Inc.).

The Unmixing of Peoples
BY ARISTIDE R. ZOLBERG

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Communist political order, the vast Eurasian domain has emerged as one of the world's largest sources of forced migrants, second only to sub-Saharan Africa. At the end of 1995, counts of forcibly displaced persons who fled out-side their countries ranged from the ranged UNHCR's 953,400, which included only those officially under its protection, to the U.S. Committee on Refugees' more comprehensive 2,169,600, which included also over a million people benefitting from some form of temporary protection. Both sources agree on another two and a half million internally displaced persons, for a total of close to five million uprooted by persecu-tion and violence.

As has come to be widely recognized, the root cause of the upheavals is the resur gence of "nationalism" throughout the for-mer Communist world. Contrary to the notions that these upheavals stem from "ancient hatreds'; ethnicity and nationalism are modern political phenomena, echoing genuine sentiments shared by the masses, but opportunistically manipulated by political entrepreneurs.

After World War I and the breakup of the empires, it proved impossible to carve out nationally homogeneous units because, for one, many of the nationalities were very small, and for another, many of them were interspersed. The solution was to patch together "multinational" states, of which the most problematic was Yugoslavia. In the era of reform, with a loosening of state and party controls at the center, the bal-ance of forces rapidly shifted from the central state to the nationally distinct republics or provinces.

The manifestations of nationalism and ethnicitv therein took on the rawness of essentialist beliefs among the masses and educated elites. Subjected to prolonged authoritarian rule, the peoples of the region had no opportunity to experience the resocialization into the values of democracy and the open society that the Atlantic world underwent in the post-World War II period.

As Michael Ignatieff has wisely observed, while nationalists in the Balkans as elsewhere "turn the historical record into a nar-rative of self-justification... so that the past can then serve to explain away their hatreds ...there is no reason why outside observers should do the same." An alternative interpretation is that developments since 1990 constitute a specific chain reaction set in motion by the actions of key political actors seeking to maintain their control in the face of a dramatic devaluation of the established "power currency." Concurrently, post-Cold War conditions undermined the equilibrium fostered by a tacit consensus between East and West on maintining the regional status quo, and provided the opportunity to envision other possibilities.

Consequently, what happened in Yugoslavia does not constitute a "tragedy" in the classical sense, because it was not fated; as late as 1989-1990, the country's disintegration was avoidable. By highlighting the role of human agency inside and outside Yugoslavia, this interpretation also suggests the inadequacies of a purely "humanitarian" approach, and that no effective preventive action is possible without addressing fundamental issues of international politics at the global and regional levels.

Reorganizing Yugoslavia into a Soviet-type federation, Tito achieved an intricate equilibrium that involved a division of the large Serbian population among several republics so as to reduce their influence in the central government, compensated by recognition of their influence in Croatia and Bosnia. Tito rallied disparate nationalists to his side by standing up against the Soviet Union. In 1954 Serbs and Croats signaled their historic reconciliation by way of a formal agreement between their representatives that they share a single language and culture. With urbanization and industrialization, there was a notable increase in internal migration and mixed marriages, as well as in the number of persons who identified themselves in the census as "Yugoslavs"; however, rural populations hung on to their ethnic specificity, especially where they formed isolated enclaves in "someone else's" republic.

The centrifugal processes and confrontations that emerged are well known, and Tito attempted to contain them by devising a more flexible federal framework that would also provide a transition from personal rule. The outcome was the constitution of 1974, which maintained the hegemony of the Communist Party while granting considerable weight and autonomy to the constitutent republics and provinces. After the death of Tito in 1980, the system he had erected continued to unravel, a process speeded up at the end the decade by the general collapse of Marxism-Leninism. One after the other, Communist leaders concluded that the key to political survival lay in shifting to the nationalist game. Vying for precedence, both Slovenia and Croatia declared their independencey October 1991, only three months after the beginning with the Serbian offensive in Croatia the war had already uprooted some 400,000 persons, and UNHCR warned that a major humanitarian catastrophe was in the making. While some of the uprooted fled in the face of generalized violence, most were the victims of what came to be termed "ethnic cleansing," whereby civilian populations of the wrong nationality were terrorized into flight or systematically driven out.

The displacement of peoples after the 1992 cease-fire included some 340,000 internally displaced Croatians; some 87,000 were in Serbian controlled regions under UN pro-tection (UNPAs), and another 253,000 scat-tered throughout government-controlled regions, with few willing to return to their homes in the UNPAs. Between 350,000 and 400,000 fled outside the country, of whom two-thirds remained within former Yugoslavia (including 161,000 in Serbia and 70,000 in Bosnia, primarily Serbs), while over 100,000 were elsewhere in Europe, notably an estimated 55,000 in Germany, 32,000 in Hungary, and 15,000 in Switzerland. Forced displacements went on until the end of the war and even after the peace was signed, as nationals who found themselves on the wrong side of the newly established borders left or were compelled to flee, notably over 60,000 Serbs from sub-urbs of Sarajevo who were transferred to the Bosnian Federation.

Beyond the hundreds of thousands of deaths, and leaving aside the tens of thousands who had already regained their homes-mostly Croats from Croatia itself- the four-year conflict left in its wake some three million displaced persons and another million and a half "war affected," amounting to about one-fifth of the population of ex-Yugoslavia; Bosnia alone accounted for some 2.3 million of the displaced and 1.4 "war affected," encompassing about two thirds of its pre-war population. In short, of the 3.0 million ex-Yugoslavs still displaced at the end of the war, approximately 2.3 million remained within the borders of ex-Yugoslavia itself (about 1.3 million in Bosnia, nearly 600,000 in Serbia, 400,000 in Croatia, and over 50,000 in the other republics); and about 700,000 were elsewhere in Europe (some 400,000 in Germany, 100,000 in Scandinavia, followed by Austria and Switzerland, and much smaller numbers in the other European countries, notably 16,000 in France and 11,000 in Great Britain). Of the 2.3 million displaced Bosnians, 1.0 million remained within Bosnia itself (Moslems and Croats); 650,000 were elsewhere in ex Yugoslavia (notably 450,000 in the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, nearly all Serbs, and 170,000 in Croatia, including about 120,000 Croats and 45,000 Moslems); and they accounted for most of the ex Yugoslavs in the rest of Europe, except for several thou-sand Kosovars. Although the vast population exchanges that have taken place have rendered the several regions more homogeneous, this does not necessarily insure peaceful future for Bosnia.

The population displacements have occasioned great concern among the international community because they have spilled over beyond the borders of the source region, into the world of affluent democracies. For similar reasons, Yugoslavia has prompted a considerably more concerted international action to con-tain or even resolve the conflict, as well as to enhance the capacity of the internation-al community to deal with population upheavals of this sort.

Arising at a time when the affluent democ-racies had come to envision mass displacement as one of the new "security issues" replacing those of the Cold War, the Yugoslav crisis prompted the development of a double strategy involving containment of the displaced within their zone of origin, coupled with the extension of temporary protection for some of them abroad. "Political will," in the sense of a commitment by the international community to back up implementation of the agreed upon conditions by effective sanctions, is a key to the preservation of minority rights in the successor republics. While minority rights are not a substitute for open societies with open institutions, they may provide a temporary constraint on destructive politi-cal strategies and an incentive for good behavior.

Overall, the catastrophic experiences of the ex-Communist world with regard to relations between ethnic and national groups demonstrates persuasively the vital importance of constitutionalism as a framework for managing differences, including not only a formal institutions but a sustaining political culture. This in turn requires a profound resocialization of the societies in question, and in particular of the generation that will assume responsibility for governance in the near future.

Finally, it should be remembered that pop-ulation flows are shaped also by opportunities available. Most fundamentally, if people have no place to go, they are most likely to stay and suffer whatever fate may be inflicted on them; although in the worst eventuality this may lead to mass murder, in some cases it may provide an incentive for compromise. On the other hand, knowing that the people one would like to eliminate from one's country do have a place to go-"a country of their own"-reduces constraints against "ethnic cleansing." As in the case of Yugoslavia, this is the source of a heart-wrenching dilemma for international humanitarian organizations as well as the humanitarian-minded public; but there surely can be no doubt that, despite all the horrors involved, "ethnic cleansing" is preferable to genocide; and if groups no longer can or wish to live together, orderly and equitable unmixing is preferable to violent ethnic cleansing.

Transforming Mental, Not Material, Borders
BY WARREN ZIMMERMANN

Bosnia is both a metaphor and a symbol for issues that transcend the Yugoslav crisis and the Balkan peninsula. The sharp certitudes of Iraq's undisguised invasion of Kuwait appear in hindsight more the global exception than the rule. The greater likelihood is for more Bosnias. Ethnic conflicts areas are as old as history, but today's world has suffered a surfeit of them, from Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and Rwanda to Sudan, Chechnya, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Even America's two neighbors, Mexico and Canada, are feeling ethnic tensions. The veneer of civilization lies thin over racial relations, especially where democratic institutions don't exist to thicken it. The problem is made more difficult by the fact that people inspired by eth-nic furies are rarely able to draw rational judgments about their own best interests.

Not all ethnic challenges sufficiently affect the primary interests of the international community, or at least of its strongest members, to warrant intervention. Nor are all susceptible to international influence, even when major interests are involved. For the rest, however, more effective strategies are needed. In the broadest sense, the realization must take hold that we live in a world of multiethnic, not national, states. Less than one-half of one percent of all the people in the world live in monoethnic states ("nation-states" in the pure sense of the word). The rest of us have to learn to live with members of different ethnic groups. This condition, where it exists, has proven no bar to freedom or prosperity, as the examples of multiethnic North America and Western Europe show.

As a rule, nation-states have nothing to unify them but their nationalism. Power within them will tend to gravitate to the most strident nationalists. This is a powerful reason why a partitioned Bosnia would be neither democratic nor stable. Multinational states can be deeply conflicted. But they can also be schools of tolerance, since the need to take account of minority interests moderates behavior. Yugoslavia had its democrats as well as its demagogues. The challenge to the world community is not to break up multiethnic states, but to make them more civil.

There's nothing to be gained, therefore, by accepting claims of self-determination at face value, even when referenda have been held to determine the wishes of a particular ethnic group. The question of viability arises immediately. If each ethnic group were given its own nation-state, there would be thousands of new countries, and old countries like Spain and India would disappear. Beyond this, changing borders almost always affects more people than those who want to make the change. The dream of the Kurdish people for self-determination is compelling. But it doesn't serve either justice or stability to dismantle the four states where Kurds live in order to make that dream come true. Few people, even in Russia, condone the bestial crimes perpetrated by the Russian army against the Chechen people. Not even those crimes, however, justify giving Chechnya independence at the possible cost of breaking up Russia, which contains within its borders twenty other autonomous republics with the same constitutional status.

Instead of giving pious lip service to self-determination, as the UN Charter does, the international community should require those seeking independence to show that their objectives don't adversely affect the interests of other states or peoples. It's the borders in the mind, the borders of prejudice, supremacy, and hate, rather than the borders on the map that are most in need of changing.

If the world is to support the idea of multiethnicity as an organizing principle for states, as I believe it should, then it will have to do more to ensure the protection of minorities within multiethnic states. Since the birth of the United Nations, chiefs of state, mostly repressive ones, have com-plained about international interference in their internal affairs. Claims of "sovereignty" have become the last refuge of dictators. Yet human rights pressures over the past two decades have severely eroded those claims. The way a government treats its people is now seen as an international, not just an internal, concern. International human rights policy, which helped to overthrow apartheid in South Africa, can and should be used more intrusively elsewhere.

The promotion of democracy, a political system consistently sensitive to the will of the people, is also indispensable. Elections are a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for democratic life. This is true even though, in the short run, they can be counterproductive. In Yugoslavia in 1990 elections strengthened destructive nationalism. Democratic choice wasn't followed by democratic conduct. People voted their past grievances instead of their future hopes. Perhaps Yugoslavia wasn't "ready" for democracy, although it's not clear how a country gets ready for democracy without having a chance to practice it. Elections didn't make Yugoslavia a democratic country, since democracy is a process rather than an event. It's always a gamble to give a demagogue a certain legitimacy through elections. But it seems to me a bigger gamble not to have elections, though their timing can be critical, as in Bosnia. If a country can be encouraged on the path of greater civil liberties and freedom of choice, then in time frequent elec-tions should begin to flush away the waste of an undemocratic past.

The Yugoslav crisis stirred end-less debate about whether the West should have dealt with the likes of Milosevic and Tudjman since they were obstacles to the democratic progress we were encouraging. This is an old problem that was also disputed during the time of Stalin and Hitler. For me the answer in this case, as in most others, is that it's better to negotiate with people who wield power than to ignore them. If they can deliver on objectives we pursue, then we serve our own interests by engaging them. Still, I think that all of us who have dealt with the Yugoslav dictators-the European Community leaders, Vance, Carrington, Owen, and many American interlocutors, including myself-committed a basic mistake. Just by treating with these demagogues, we inevitably swelled their egos and reputations, spread their fame, and proba bly strengthened their domestic political base. We should have taken compensating steps to redouble our support for the small, non-nationalist, democratic parties that were cut off from access to publicity, patron age, and power. It's still not too late to do this in Bosnia. The case of Spain shows the critical difference democracy can make to prosperity. In the 1960s Yugoslavia and Spain, despite the ideological gulf between them and the higher development of Spanish culture, were quite similar - two countries on the fringes of Europe, belonging to no major European blocs or organizations, in early states of economic development (Spain was a shade ahead), living in the aftermath of bloody civil wars, plagued by serious ethnic problems, and run by powerful dictators. Spain prospered; Yugoslavia collapsed. The reason was that Spain made itself a democracy and Yugoslavia didn't. For whatever motives, General Francisco Franco set his country on the right course.

The various forms of democracy in multi-ethnic states deserve more attention than they have so far received. The ideal is to treat people as individual citizens rather than as members of groups. But that won't soon be attainable in states where ethnic groups feel a strong sense of identity and nurse real or imagined grievances. Alternative forms of power sharing seem called for, so that an ethnic majority can't abuse an ethnic minority, as happened so often in Yugoslavia and its successor states. Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Malaysia have all worked out successful power-sharing arrangements, using coalition governments, proportional representation, local ethnic autonomy, or limited minority vetoes. The U.S . Constitution, with its checks and balances, is a power-sharing device, though not an eth-nic one. Yugoslavia was a failed experiment in power sharing. Post-Dayton Bosnia is the latest fragile Balkan candidate to submit to the test.

In December, the ICMEC hosted a conference titled "A New Immigrant Policy for a New New York," which was the culmination of an 18-month project sponsored by the New York Community Trust. The themes were as follows:

-"The Education of Immigrant Children: The Case of New York City" by Francisco Rivera-Batiz
-"Immigrant Health in New York City: An Overview of Available Data and Current Issues" by
  Suzanne Michael
-"Immigrants as Workers in New York City: A Review of Current Debates and Evidence" by
  Elizabeth Mueller and David Howell

The respondents addressed a variety of concerns, but there were some general themes that emerged. Specifically, it was largely suggested that more services are needed to help integrate immigrants into the city's civic life but there was a general skepticism that these goals could effectively take place under the present economic and political situations.

EDUCATION
Dr. Louis O. Reyes, of the New York Board of Education, in his comments on Dr. Rivera-Batiz's paper, argued that New York needs to bolster its emphasis on immigrants' education needs. Reyes commented that overcrowding of schools was not just a factor of increased immigration over the past ten to twenty years but also of general budget cuts. Reyes also stated that successful acculturation is most likely to occur if ESL students have the opportunity to learn in bilingual schools. He emphasized that it takes five to seven years for an immi-grant to successfully bridge the gap between their home country and their adopted one. Because of this, it would be a disservice to rush non-English speaking students into a monolingual program after one or two years. On this particular point, there was a genuine disagreement between Reyes and Rivera-Batiz.
Margie McHugh, Executive Director of the New York Immigrant Coalition, also pointed out the fiscal constraints which limit available funds to meet immigrants' education needs. But money can not be the only solution; appropriate planning is also required. Programs which recognize the specific road-blocks immigrant families face should be implemented. Teacher certification in ESL programs is one kind of reform. Others involved in the education bureaucracy, such as secretaries, also require training so that when they make decisions about student placement, immigrant needs will not be overlooked. Simple things such as pamphlets explaining school documents can make immigrant par-ents aware of what is going on at the schools. These steps, among others, will help counter the alienating experiences immigrants face when they enter a new school environment

HEALTH
The Honorable Richard Gottfried, Chair of the Health Committee of the New York State Assembly, in response to Suzanne Michael's paper, commented on immigrant access to health care. He underscored Michael's point that it is difficult to obtain data on immigrants. With the new laws coming out of Washington and a general antiimmigrant sentiment, immigrants may be con-cerned about indicating their citizenship status on a form. This process limits an immi-grant's access to heath care. Gottfried also stated that the bilingual certification process needs to be reexamined.

Laray Brown, Senior Vice President of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, discussed the cost issues involved in the health care field relative to immigrants' needs. She stated that the new laws which have rescinded immigrants' access to Medicare may negatively affect the costs for some institutions to provide adequate health care. She stated that pol-icy organizations should consult health care providers since they have a specialized knowledge of how the system works in practice. Lastly, she spoke about the need for strategies to encourage small businesses to provide their workers with health insurance.

LABOR
The director of the immigration project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), Muzaffar Chishti, responded to David Howell's and Elizabeth Mueller's presentation on immigrant workers in New York City. He agreed with Howell and Mueller that present data about immigrants is dated, especially with the recent influx of new arrivals. He also stated that immigration has been a great benefit to New York and to the immigrants themselves. In order to appreciate this, studies need to be done on the second generation, for there is where the success can be really gauged. Chishti argued that there should be more studies on the immigrant experience in relation to African-Americans' situation in the United States. He ended by advocating that more human capital be put into the needs of immigrants, that affirmative action policies be part of the assimilation process, and that there be more public accountability in the workplace.

James Parrot, Chief Economist of the Office of the State Deputy Controller for New York City, was the last respondent. He gave a broad overview of New York's economic structure and noted that immigrants have been an essential part of the economy. However, the realities of an eroding middle class and decline in wages make for more dif-ficulties for immigrants who are now also faced with cuts in food stamps. Part of the problem in analyzing what steps to take to remedy the problem is the scarcity of information on who is getting jobs and where the dislocated workers have gone. Parrot contended that economic development needed to be expanded with tax cuts for businesses as a way of stimulating job growth. The conclusion of this panel featured an animated discussion about the actual and potential policy relevance of Howell's and Mueller's findings.