Since the 1980s, anti-immigrant discourse has shifted away from the "color" of immigrants to their religion and culture, focusing on newcomers from Muslim countries that are feared as terrorists and the products of tribal societies with values fundamentally opposed to those of secular western Europe. Leo Lucassen's "The Immigrant Threat" tackles the question of whether it is reasonable to believe that the integration process of these new immigrants will indeed be fundamentally different in the long run (over multiple generations) from ones experienced by similar immigrant groups in the past....

In this volume the authors present an alternative approach to the history of gypsies and travelling groups in western Europe. By focusing on processes of social construction, stigmatization and categorization, they offer new insights into the development of government policies towards itinerants in general and the ethnicization of some of these groups in particular. They analyze the western images and representations of gypsies and other itinerant groups, at the same time focusing on their functions for the labour market. By doing so, they add a new chapter to the field of social history.

Migration und Integration prägen die europäische Geschichte seit ihren Anfängen. Heute stehen sie aus aktuellen Gründen im Mittelpunkt öffentlicher Aufmerksamkeit.§Viele Europäer halten die neuen Herausforderungen für eine historische Ausnahmesituation. Sie irren. Wanderungsbewegungen waren seit jeher Teil der europäischen Geschichte. Viele, die sich gegenwärtig über die Integration von Fremden sorgen, wissen nicht, dass sie selber ferne Nachfahren von Zuwanderern sind. Die Vielfalt der Gruppen, die sich innerhalb Europas bis heute über die Grenzen staatlicher, kultureller und...