Research Papers

Large-scale immigration raises questions such as "Who are we?" and "Who belongs to us?" (Bauboeck 1996: 7). Nation-states try to manage those questions by setting up criteria for inclusion and exclusion applied through their citizenship regimes. However, decentralization and the re-emergence of regions as important social, economic and political actors has led to a revival of regional identities. Moreover, territories traditionally inhabited by ethno-national minorities quot; or nations without a state quot; such as South Tyrol, Catalonia, the Basque country, Flanders, Scotland, etc. have always defended their particular identity within a larger nation-state. Those regional actors do not have, in most cases, the means to set up criteria for inclusion and exclusion through citizenship regimes. Nevertheless, immigration alters the population of those regions and territories, and raises important questions regarding the impact of migration on regional or minority identities. The article aims first to elaborate on the relation between immigration and identity change within stateless nations and territories inhabited by national minorities from a theoretical point of view: How does immigration affect the collective identity of ethno-national minorities? Might immigrants become a factor preserving and strengthening the territory or are they a threat to the distinctiveness of the culture? Secondly the article examines those questions by comparing Scotland (UK) and South Tyrol (I), two regions characterized by strong regional identities as well as claims for more independence and a wide margin of powers to govern the territory, but also increasing migration from third countries. The parties governing the territory, the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party, UK) and the SVP (South Tyrolean People's Party, I) promote two opposing approaches towards immigration: an inclusive one in Scotland and a rather exclusive one in South Tyrol.