Nativism (politics)
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native-born or indigenous people over those of immigrants, including the support of anti-immigration and immigration-restriction measures.
Definition
According to Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia professor, nativism is a largely American notion that is rarely debated in Western Europe or Canada; the word originated with mid-19th-century political parties in the United States, most notably the Know Nothing party, which saw Catholic immigration from nations such as Germany and Ireland as a serious threat to native-born Protestant Americans. In the United States, nativism does not refer to a movement led by Native Americans, also referred to as American Indians. Rather, it denotes to the movement protecting the interests of the people descended from the founding generations of the United States. Namely, in the 2020s the designation of the Heritage American has been articulated as a nativist concept, which encompasses the people who can trace their roots to the times when the United States was established and are thus descended from the founding stock of the country. While the concept primarily refers to offsprings of original American settlers of Anglo-Protestant and Scotch-Irish descent who founded the United States, it can also include the Indigenous Americans and descendents of slaves who have been present in the country since those times. However, according to some American proponents of nativism such as Matt Walsh, the fact that the United States was primarily founded by the people of European descent grants them a superior claim over being native to the country, because before their arrival and effort the United States as such did not exist. The concept of "Heritage American" includes not just demographic heritage but also cultural and aesthetic values developed by the settlers which is considered as foundational to the Americana culture.Causes
According to Joel S. Fetzer, opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has especially been studied in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in continental Europe. Thus, nativism has become a general term for opposition to immigration which is based on fears that immigrants will "distort or spoil" existing cultural values. In situations where immigrants greatly outnumber the original inhabitants, nativists seek to prevent cultural change.Beliefs that contribute to anti-immigration sentiment include:
- Economic
- * Employment: The belief that immigrants acquire jobs that would have otherwise been available to native citizens, limiting native employment, and the belief that immigrants also create a surplus of labor that results in lowered wages.
- * Government expense: The belief that immigrants do not pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the services they require.
- * Welfare: The belief that immigrants make heavy use of the social welfare systems.
- * Housing: The belief that immigrants reduce vacancies, causing rent increases.
- Cultural
- * Language: The belief that immigrants isolate themselves in their own communities and refuse to learn the local language.
- * Culture: The belief that immigrants will outnumber the native population and replace its culture with theirs.
- * Crime: The belief that immigrants are more prone to crime than the native population.
- * Patriotism: The belief that immigrants damage a nation's sense of community based on ethnicity and nationality.
- Environmental
- * Environment: The belief that immigrants increase the consumption of limited resources.
- * Overpopulation: The belief that immigration contributes to overpopulation.
- Decolonization: The belief immigrants are colonizing those considered native or indigenous people.
- Settler colonialism: The belief the rights and interests of the original settlers should be prioritized over those of Indigenous populations and subsequent immigrant groups.
By country and region
Asia-Pacific
Australia
Many Australians opposed the influx of Chinese immigrants at time of the nineteenth-century gold rushes. When the separate Australian colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, the new nation adopted "White Australia" as one of its founding principles. Under the White Australia policy, entry of Chinese and other Asians remained controversial until well after World War II, although the country remained home to many long-established Chinese families dating from before the adoption of White Australia. By contrast, most Pacific Islanders were deported soon after the policy was adopted, while the remainder were forced out of the canefields where they had worked for decades.Antipathy of native-born white Australians toward British and Irish immigrants in the late 19th century was manifested in a new party, the Australian Natives' Association.
Since early 2000, opposition has mounted to asylum seekers arriving in boats from Indonesia.
Pakistan
The Pakistani province of Sindh has seen nativist movements, promoting control for the Sindhi people over their homeland. After the 1947 Partition of India, large numbers of Muhajir people migrating from India entered the province, becoming a majority in the provincial capital city of Karachi, which formerly had an ethnically Sindhi majority. Sindhis have also voiced opposition to the promotion of Urdu, as opposed to their native tongue, Sindhi.These nativist movements are expressed through Sindhi nationalism and the Sindhudesh separatist movement. Nativist and nationalist sentiments increased greatly after the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971.
Taiwan
is a genre of Taiwanese literature that was born in the 1920s, the Taiwan under Japanese rule. Taiwan nativist literature was suppressed by the rise of Japanese fascism in 1937, and after the surrender of Japan, it was suppressed by the White Terror of the Chinese Nationalist Party and began to gain attention again in the 1970s.After the Chinese Civil War, Taiwan became a sanctuary for Chinese nationalists who followed a Western ideology, fleeing from communists. The new arrivals governed through the Kuomintang until the 1970s. Taiwanese identity constructed through literature in the post-civil war period led to the gradual acceptance of Taiwan's unique political destiny. This led to a peaceful transition of power from the Kuomintang to the Democratic Progressive Party in the 2000s. A-chin Hsiau claims the origins of Taiwanese national identity to the 1970s, when youth activism transformed society, politics and culture which some are still present.
Americas
Brazil
The Brazilian elite desired the racial whitening of the country, similarly to Argentina and Uruguay. The country encouraged European immigration, but non-white immigration always faced considerable backlash. On 28 July 1921, representatives Andrade Bezerra and Cincinato Braga proposed a law whose Article 1 provided: "The immigration of individuals from the black race to Brazil is prohibited." On 22 October 1923, representative Fidélis Reis produced another bill on the entry of immigrants, whose fifth article was as follows: "The entry of settlers from the black race into Brazil is prohibited. For Asian there will be allowed each year a number equal to 5% of those residing in the country.".In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were negative feelings toward the communities of German, Italian, Japanese, and Jewish immigrants, who conserved their languages and cultures instead of adopting Portuguese and Brazilian habits, and were seen as particularly likely to form ghettos and to have high rates of endogamy, among other concerns.
It affected the Japanese more harshly, because they were Asian, and thus seen as an obstacle to the whitening of Brazil. Oliveira Viana, a Brazilian jurist, historian and sociologist described the Japanese immigrants as follows: "They are like sulfur: insoluble". The Brazilian magazine O Malho in its edition of December 5, 1908 issued criticised the Japanese immigrants in the following quote: "The government of São Paulo is stubborn. After the failure of the first Japanese immigration, it contracted 3,000 yellow people. It insists on giving Brazil a race diametrically opposite to ours". In 1941 the Brazilian minister of justice, Francisco Campos, defended the ban on the admission of 400 Japanese immigrants into São Paulo writing: "their despicable standard of living is a brutal competition with the country's worker; their selfishness, their bad faith, their refractory character, make them a huge ethnic and cultural cyst located in the richest regions of Brazil".
Years before World War II, the government of President Getúlio Vargas initiated a process of forced assimilation of people of immigrant origin in Brazil. In 1933, a constitutional amendment was approved by a large majority and established immigration quotas without mentioning race or nationality and prohibited the population concentration of immigrants. According to the text, Brazil could not receive more than 2% of the total number of entrants of each nationality that had been received in the last 50 years. Only the Portuguese were excluded. The measures did not affect the immigration of Europeans such as Italians and Spaniards, who had already entered in large numbers and whose migratory flow was downward. However, immigration quotas, which remained in force until the 1980s, restricted Japanese immigration, as well as Korean and Chinese immigration.
During World War II they were seen as more loyal to their countries of origin than to Brazil. In fact, there were violent revolts in the Japanese community of the states of São Paulo and Paraná when Emperor Hirohito declared the Japanese surrender and stated that he was not really a deity, which news was seen as a conspiracy perpetrated in order to hurt Japanese honour and strength. Nevertheless, it followed hostility from the government. The Japanese Brazilian community was strongly marked by restrictive measures when Brazil declared war against Japan in August 1942. Japanese Brazilians could not travel the country without safe conduct issued by the police; over 200 Japanese schools were closed and radio equipment was seized to prevent transmissions on short wave from Japan. The goods of Japanese companies were confiscated and several companies of Japanese origin suffered restrictions, including the use of the newly founded Banco América do Sul. Japanese Brazilians were prohibited from driving motor vehicles, buses or trucks on their property. The drivers employed by Japanese had to have permission from the police. Thousands of Japanese immigrants were arrested or expelled from Brazil on suspicion of espionage. There were many anonymous denunciations because of "activities against national security" arising from disagreements between neighbours, recovery of debts and even fights between children. Japanese Brazilians were arrested for "suspicious activity" when they were in artistic meetings or picnics. On July 10, 1943, approximately 10,000 Japanese and German immigrants who lived in Santos had 24 hours to close their homes and businesses and move away from the Brazilian coast. The police acted without any notice. About 90% of people displaced were Japanese. To reside in Baixada Santista, the Japanese had to have a safe conduct. In 1942, the Japanese community who introduced the cultivation of pepper in Tomé-Açu, in Pará, was virtually turned into a "concentration camp" from which no Japanese could leave. This time, the Brazilian ambassador in Washington, D.C., Carlos Martins Pereira e Sousa, encouraged the government of Brazil to transfer all the Japanese Brazilians to "internment camps" without the need for legal support, in the same manner as was done with the Japanese residents in the United States. No single suspicion of activities of Japanese against "national security" was confirmed.
Nowadays, nativism in Brazil affects primarily migrants from elsewhere in the Third World, such as the new wave of Levantine Arabs, South and East Asians, Spanish-speakers and Amerindians from neighbouring South American countries and, especially, West Africans and Haitians. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake and considerable illegal immigration to northern Brazil and São Paulo, a subsequent debate in the population was concerned with the reasons why Brazil has such lax laws and enforcement concerning illegal immigration.
According to the 1988's Brazilian Constitution, it is an unbailable crime to address someone in an offensive racist way, and it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of his or her race, skin colour, national or regional origin or nationality; thus, nativism and opposition to multiculturalism would be too much of a polemic and delicate topic to be openly discussed as a basic ideology for even the most right-leaning modern political parties.