Review of Gershon Shafir, <em>Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accomodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia, and Estonia </em>

Author: José Casanova

November 1, 1996

In this article, José Casanova reviews Gershon Shafir's Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia, and Estonia (1995). Casanova notes positively that the book offers a strong historical background of all of the case studies, while also building a strong general sociological framework. Combining Marxist and ethnic theories, Shafir divides nationalism into hegemonic and corporate nationalism, the first accepting immigrants and maintaining a horizontal labor market, and the second more exclusionary. Casanova states that the four regions illustrate the article's framework well, but that the conclusion is not as strong, as it does not take into account the different levels of integration within the states described within each case study. Casanova cites the formation of the modern Spanish state versus the failure of glasnost and perestroika as an unaccounted-for difference between Russia and Spain. This review was published in the journal Contemporary Sociology.

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