Citizenship, Parliamentary Access and Ethnic Groupness: Explaining the Political Integration of New Europeans in Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands

This paper analyses the commonly assumed argument on the base of which some countries favour the politicization of ethnic groupness. This assumption can be summed up as follows: top-down measures that promote better institutional access in the policy domain as well as cultural acknowledgement according to ethnic origins in the public domain will lead to better bottom-up political integration in terms of participation to, trust in, and satisfaction with politics by New European Citizens (NEIs), that is, citizens of migrant origins who have acquired full citizenship in the course of their previous generation or just during their own life. Hence, we appraise the impact of top-down measures that open up Parliamentary representation to the New Europeans in the policy domain side by side with cultural policies in the public domain. Our study includes Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.