Challenging the liberal nation-state? Postnationalism, multiculturalism, and the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Germany

As important aspects of purported tendencies toward globalization and plura lization, recent immigration waves and the resulting presence of culturally different ethnic minorities are often seen as fundamentally challenging li beral nation-states and traditional models of citizenship. According to thi s perspective, migrants and ethnic minorities contribute through their clai ms making both to the external erosion of sovereignty (the postnational cha llenge), and to the internal cultural differentiation of liberal nation-sta tes (the multicultural challenge). In contrast, alternative theoretical app roaches have emphasized the continuing relevance of the nation-state in the processes of inclusion and exclusion of minorities. From these three persp ectives on citizenship (postnational, multicultural, and national) a set of hypotheses is derived and tested with data on the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in two European countries, Britain and G ermany, for the period 1990-95. The data show very Little support for the p ostnational approach, mixed results regarding the multicultural model, and strong support for the continuing relevance of national models of citizensh ip. Counter to claims that national modes of migrant incorporation have bec ome insignificant, the evidence shows that migrant claims making is still f orged in the image of a particular nation-state.