I. Introduction
Ever since the modern era, movement of people has become more common. Nevertheless, immigration remains a heatedly debated issue both in the academia and in public, especially in recent years. Some claim that demographically, the “Western societies have become racially, ethnically, and religiously more diverse as a result of immigration” (Koopmans 2013, p. 149). Following this are xeno-racism (Fekete 2001), anxiety and fear (Vertovec 2011), and worries about loss of authenticity (Grillo 2002). This essay attempts to unravel the myth of immigration, and to understand the reasons behind problematization of it.
In this essay, I try to understand the objections to immigration by noticing the symbolic difference constructed and involved in the debate. First, I argue that from a micro perspective,
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13). However, jumping out of the box of cultural essentialism, we have to acknowledge that in the long term, the meaning behind symbolic difference can change. Immigrants settle down, interact with the local community, and negotiate their identities and belonging (Grønseth 2017). Some even “actively attest their practical nationality” (Pratsinakis 2013, p. 1297) to fit in, trying to gain the vernacular sense of citizenship (Brettell 2015). Things can be even more complicated when taking the second or third immigrant generation into account, as in the case of Swiss citizenship debate (Wessendorf 2008). When we think in the long term and push a bit further, we may have to consider what will happen when the meaning of symbolic difference changes over time, and meanwhile, some people still hold on to the traditional national symbolism. It is in this case that immigration can cause great problem, even triggering identity