Revue Européenne

des Migrations Internationales

Volume 5, N° 1

2eme trimestre 1989

Europe and America : A Comparative Analysis of « Ethnicity »

Donald L. HOROWITZ

Wherever people arrive at the same place of habitation, but

at different times, prior occupation creates certain expectations about priority of rights. This occurs not only among ethnic groups but among siblings and among families in a village or a town. Earlier occupants often claim priority and receive deference from those who arrive later, sometimes long after both have been established in the same place (1). But whether this cleavage is mild or serious — and how long it persists — is highly variable from place to place. Claims to priority are often revealed by terminology. Consider the contemporary usage of the terms immigrant group and ethnic group. There is a difference between being an immigrant group and being merely one of several ethnic groups. That difference expresses a powerful contrast in the way in which societies operate.

To be an immigrant group is, in some variable measure, to lack legitimacy in the state, to lack entitlement to the full panoply of rights, privileges, and opportunities the state affords. If there exists an immigrant group, there also exists, implicitly, a more legitimate indigenous group. Some of the most extreme cases of ethnic conflict in Asia and Africa revolve around sharp distinctions between indigenes and immigrants. Indigenes, often called « sons of the soil », claim priority in the symbols of the state, in government employment, in language and religion, in land ownership, and in educational opportunities. In some cases, immigrants, even those who have been in the country for generations, are told that they are there on sufferance, that they are guests who must yield pride of place to their indigenous hosts. Political equality is not possible. In states such as Fiji, Malaysia, Assam in India, and to some extent Sri Lanka, indigenousness is ideologized into an elaborate claim to priority. Indigenousness is not the only basis of ethnic exclusion, but it can certainly be a very powerful one (2).

By contrast, where indigenousness does not create a strong claim to priority and where everyone in a multiethnic society simply belongs to one or another