Ethno-Traditional Nationalism and Immigration (2019) PDF

Nations and Nationalism 25 (2), 2019, 435–448. DOI: 10.1111/nana.12516 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration ERIC KAUFMANN Department of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK ABSTRACT. The rise of the populist right i...

Nations and Nationalism 25 (2), 2019, 435–448. DOI: 10.1111/nana.12516 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration ERIC KAUFMANN Department of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK ABSTRACT. The rise of the populist right in the West is emerging as the most discussed manifestation of nationalism in the world today. In this paper, I argue that this ‘new nationalism’ is largely driven by immigration, which affects ethnic majorities within nation-states. This in turn alters the ethnic character of the nation, challenging what I term the ethno-traditions of nationhood. Our inherited concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism were developed in an earlier period when immigration was limited and territorial revisionism animated nationalist movements. Only on the furthest reaches of the extreme right is the worldview one of ethnic nationalism. In our demo- graphically churning yet territorially static western world, we need a new term to de- scribe the cultural nationalism of the anti-immigration right. I characterise this as ethno-traditional nationalism, a variety of nationalism which seeks to protect the tradi- tional preponderance of ethnic majorities through slower immigration and assimilation but which does not seek to close the door entirely to migration or exclude minorities from national membership. KEYWORDS: cultural nationalism, ethnic nationalism, ethnic–civic, far right/radical right/populist right, immigration/migration The rise of the populist right in the West is emerging as the most discussed manifestation of nationalism in the world today. In this paper, I argue that this ‘new nationalism’ is largely driven by immigration, which affects ethnic majorities within nation-states. This in turn alters the ethnic character of the nation, challenging what I term the ethno-traditions of nationhood – a change which mobilises resistance among both majority and minority cultural conservatives. In other words, the ethnic majority and other established ethnic groups are symbols of the nation alongside other reference points such as language or ideology. This approach represents an extension of Anthony Smith’s (1998) theory of ethnosymbolism. Rather than apply it to the origin of nations, I use it to account for the motivation of leaders of, and voters for, populist right political parties. These aim to protect the ethnic majority – a symbol of the nation – through immigration restriction and ethnic assimilation. Unfortunately, our theories of nationalism were either developed during pe- riods of limited immigration or grew from historical analyses of periods in © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 436 Eric Kaufmann & Andrea Ballatore which ethnic change was modest. The concept of ethnic nationalism was devel- oped to explain the activities of movements during a period of geopolitical un- certainty whose aim was to legitimate territorial and political claims to independent statehood. By contrast, the ‘new nationalism’ is unfolding in a world of secure nation-states and is generally uninterested in territorial revi- sionism. Ethnic tradition, not political boundaries, is at issue. Undaunted, scholars have stretched concepts such as ethnic and civic nationalism to explain the new forms of nationalism; retro-fitted existing terms such as nation with prefixes such as ‘racial’ or ‘majority’; or sought to use hazily defined political epithets such as nativism, xenophobia and racism to conduct schol- arly analyses. Events on the ground often shape the nature of nationalism studies. Hans Kohn (1944) and Alfred Cobban (1945), writing towards the end of World War II, divided the world into malign ‘eastern’ and benign ‘western’ nations, corresponding roughly to the Axis and Allied powers. Out of this came the ‘ethnic–civic’ paradigm in nationalism studies. Here, the focus was partly on how nationalism propelled states into political conflict and partly on cultural questions of how minorities were treated. The next wave of real-world developments, secession of colonies from salt- water empires, concentrated minds on questions of high politics, postcolonial elite mobilisation and the formation of new states. Anti-colonial nationalisms began in the 1940s, cresting in the 1950s and early 1960s. New secessionist movements gained traction in Quebec, Northern Ireland and Flanders in the 1960s and in Catalonia and Scotland in the 1970s. Early theories of national- ism appeared from Elie Kedourie (1960) and Ernest Gellner (1964). Classic historical-sociological works by Gellner, Smith, Anderson, Hobsbawm and Breuilly followed in the early to mid-1980s. When the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) was founded in 1990 by Anthony Smith and his graduate students, scholarly work focused on post-Soviet seces- sionist nationalism and related events like the breakup of Yugoslavia. The con- cern with secession, like the earlier ethnic–civic debate, was primarily about the problem of power and territory: how states were breaking apart along lines demarcating communities of culture, history and/or shared sentiment. Perennialist versus constructionist and ethnosymbolist versus modernist were the main analytical frameworks. Immigration and ethnic change did not figure prominently in these earlier waves of theory development of the 1940s, 1960s or 1980s–1990s. This is why the classic works of nationalism theory did not de- velop the nuanced conceptual tools we require at the moment. The same holds for ethnicity theory. The period from the 1960s to the 1980s witnessed the Civil Rights movement in the United States, rise of aboriginal activism in North America and Australasia and the growth of immigrant com- munities in Europe. Out of this ideological and demographic ferment came new research agendas on multiculturalism, diaspora and, later, whiteness (Delgado and Stefancic 1997; Kymlicka 1995). Yet this work was more nor- mative than was the case for nationalism theory, creating a blind spot which © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration 437 neglected the identity movements of dominant/majority ethnic groups or de- rided them in one-dimensional terms as racist or ethno-nationalist, obfuscating the nuances therein. Comparativists and historians of nationalism came closer to diagnosing the concept, deploying terms such as titular group or staatsvolk, while Anthony Smith coined the term ‘dominant ethnie’. Yet Smith’s consideration of domi- nant ethnies tended to end with the birth of the modern nation-state (Kaufmann and Zimmer 2004). As student of Smith’s studying the response of the WASP American dominant ethnie to immigration, I argued that ethnic majorities and dominant minorities remain important actors even after the birth of the modern nation (Kaufmann 2004a, 2004b). This is especially impor- tant when ethnic majorities face relative decline due to immigration or other sources of differential ethnic population growth. Majority ethnicity remains a vital force within modern nation-states, and much of the ‘nationalism’ we see is in fact the political expression of majority ethnicity, albeit of a less exclusivist and dominant variety than that observed in postcolonial states such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka or Assam in India (Horowitz 1985: 196–202). In Britain, a survey I conducted in late 2017 showed that when a group of British respondents were given a choice between a high volume of high-skilled immigrants, maintaining current immigration levels, and a lower volume of lower-skilled immigrants, involving reduced immigration, opinion divided roughly evenly between the two options. When it was mentioned to a separate group that the high immigration option would produce an eight- point greater decline in White British share by 2060, support for current immi- gration levels dropped thirty points, with over eighty per cent favouring the low immigration/low skill option (Kaufmann 2018). In short, the demo- graphic decline of the ethnic majority underlies anxiety over immigration, which is central to explaining right-wing populism. Indeed, the American National Election Study (ANES) 2016 Pilot Survey data presented in Figure 1 shows that after opposition to immigration and po- litical correctness, the extent to which a White American feels their White iden- tity is important to them is the most important predictor of whether they supported Donald Trump in the presidential primaries. Majority ethnic iden- tity is also becoming more salient as the share of non-Hispanic Whites declines in America. During Trump’s 2015–2016 primary campaign, Tropp and Knowles (2018) find that Whites’ propensity to support him rose from twenty per cent in a neighbourhood without Hispanics to thirty-five per cent in a half- Hispanic neighbourhood (Knowles and Tropp 2016). Jardina (2014: 50–53, 70, 82) shows, across a range of surveys, that the share of Whites who say White identity is ‘very’ or ‘moderately’ important to them almost doubled between the 1990s and 2010s – to the point that forty-five to sixty-five per cent now say it matters. As ethnic majorities demographically decline in the West, these identities are likely to become more salient. Meanwhile, the forces which bol- stered the statist elements of nationalism – interstate war and ideological con- flict – are much less important than in the past (Pinker 2011). War and Great © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 438 Eric Kaufmann & Andrea Ballatore Figure 1. Impact on Trump support (US Whites). Source: ANES 2016 pilot survey. N = 874; R2 = 0.419. Controls for party identity, with state fixed effects and design weights. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] Power competition helped integrate France’s new immigrants in the early twentieth century and America’s during World War II, but such imperatives are distinctly lacking today. Ethnic nationalism Meinecke (1908), Kohn (1944), and later Smith (1991) developed the ethnic– civic typology of nationalism. The theory essentially argues that the circum- stances of a nation’s birth mark it for life. That is, nations that seceded from states, such as Estonia, or unified smaller units into a larger state, like Germany, had to define themselves in ethnic rather than institutional terms. They were also more influenced by nineteenth century counter-Enlightenment than eighteenth century Enlightenment ideas. Ethnic nationalism defines national membership in ethnic terms, while civic nationalism defines it in terms of territory and the rights and duties of citizen- ship. Brubaker (1992) applied this framework to the question of immigrant in- clusion in his Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, arguing that idioms of nationhood derived from the circumstances of these nations’ birth meant French citizenship was more open than Germany’s to immigrants. The implication here is that national membership in Germany is ethnically ex- clusive, whereas in France, it is inclusive because it is defined on the basis of territory and republican principles. Even if we set aside the problem of Ger- man reforms to citizenship laws which facilitated the naturalisation of © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration 439 immigrants in the 1990s, the question remains whether the typical French voter truly conceives of her nation in the civic terms set out in French law. Here, it is noteworthy that in the 2005–2007 World Values Survey (WVS 2009), more respondents from the ‘civic’ United States or Canada said having ancestors born in the country was an important criteria for citizenship than did those in ‘ethnic’ Norway. Indeed, the data in Figure 2 show that social liberal- ism counts for far more than the circumstances of a nation’s birth in predicting public opinion on the ethnic–civic dimension. Many have gone on to apply the term ethnic nationalism to the politics of immigration restriction and the far right. Yet immigrants comprised no more than one to two per cent of most European nations’ population in 1900 (Baycroft and Hewitson 2006: 328). Most ethnic minorities were either re- gional groups like the Bretons or native minorities such as Jews or Roma. In short, the problems that would later emerge played little part in the definition of ethnic and civic nationhood. Another blind spot concerns ethnic majorities. This omission shaped international norms as they emerged between 1918 and 1945. As Liav Orgad points out, ethnic majorities have no standing in interna- tional law, which only refers to nation-states or ethnic minorities. As a result, nations rely on ostensibly ‘colour-blind’ statist rationales to protect their ethnic majorities (Orgad 2015, chapter 5). For instance, the Danish immigration law which limits citizenship to spouses over age 24 results in reduced Muslim mar- riage migration, thereby protecting the Danish ethnic majority from ethnic change. Given the limited effectiveness of measures such as language and Figure 2. Tolerance of homosexuality and ethnic nationalism (WVS 2009). Source: World Values Survey 2005–2007. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 440 Eric Kaufmann & Andrea Ballatore history tests, or statements of national values, most western states are opting to reduce immigration to a level their electorates will accept. Ethno-traditional nationalism The demographically stable world which incubated nationalism theory offers a limited vocabulary for describing the outlook of the bulk of populist right voters or even the majority of western publics. Even taking on board critiques of the ethnic–civic dichotomy – which decompose it into an interplay between ideologies of inclusion/exclusion and discrete symbols or allow for contesta- tion and change – is insufficient for understanding the ‘new nationalism’ in the West today (i.e. Hutchinson 2005; Kaufmann 2008; Zimmer 2003). This is because we must distinguish between ethnic traditions and ethnic exclusion within nationalism. Perhaps it is easier to begin with smaller units. For instance, someone living in Harlem in New York may view the area as having an African American eth- nic tradition even as they accept that you do not have to be Black to be a Har- lemite. The same might hold in Acadiana (‘Cajun country’) in Louisiana: it has a French-Acadian ethnic tradition, but one can be non-French and still be treated as a fully equal member of the regional territorial community of Acadiana. So too at national level: Sweden may have a White Swedish ethnic tradition, while at the same time, people might accept that members of the Swedish nation can come in any colour or creed and all are fully equal. The same even holds within ethnic groups. A Cajun with a ‘typical’ Acadian- French surname like Leger is not considered more of a Cajun than, for in- stance, Steve Riley, who fronts a popular Cajun band, since the Cajuns have absorbed people from other European backgrounds over time through inter- marriage. So too a Gaelic speaker is not perceived as more Irish than an En- glish speaker of Irish descent. Archetypes and traditions do not define membership, but they do delineate what I term an ethno-traditional form of na- tional identity. Critically, both minorities and majorities may be attached to ethno-traditions of nationhood and seek to defend them. Ethno-traditionalism in public opinion It could be argued that those who say it’s important to have British ancestry to be ‘truly British’ are ethnic nationalists. Indeed, 60.4 per cent of White British respondents on the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey said having British an- cestry was ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ important for being ‘truly British’, with a broadly even 30–30 split between these two response categories. Yet eighty-six per cent of Britons in 2004 also say you do not have to be White to be British (Phillips 2004). Likewise, in the US, Americans of all races rate Blacks and Whites as more American (on a seven-point scale) than Asians (Devos and Banaji © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration 441 2005: 447). Yet a question asking about whether certain aspects ‘should be im- portant … in making someone a true American’ found that only seventeen per cent agreed that ‘having European ancestors’ (ten per cent for ‘being White’) was very or fairly important for being a ‘true American’ (Schildkraut 2007: 602). Hispanics were actually more likely than Whites to endorse these senti- ments. Unfortunately, no question was asked about African Americans. A somewhat more contentious way of getting at the question of ethno- traditions is the following, asked of 715 Americans on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) in September 2017: ‘America includes everyone, but the three most authentically American groups are American Indians, White Anglo- Saxon Protestants and African-Americans because they shaped America from the start’. Forty-five per cent of Blacks and Native Americans, forty per cent of Whites and twenty-five per cent of Hispanics and Asians agreed. I also asked a separate sample of 467 Americans on MTurk in 2017, ‘All surnames are equally American, but if someone from another country asked you what a characteristic American surname was, which of the following would you choose?’ Options were (rotated): Browning, Graziano, Hernandez, Schultz and Wong. Eighty-one per cent of those who responded chose Browning, the Anglo surname, including eighty-five per cent of Hispanics. In addition, seventy-two per cent of 525 respondents – including seventy per cent of Cath- olics – selected Protestant as opposed to Catholic or Jewish as the typical American religion. Of course, this could be because Anglo surnames and the Protestant religion are statistically overrepresented, but I would interpret these results as also recognising what Schrag (1973) termed the American ‘imago’ or majority ethnic ‘American’ archetype. Does this make these respondents eth- nic nationalists? We aver that most Americans are not ethnic nationalist, but many are ethno-traditional. That is, few would restrict national membership to those from the dominant ethnic group, but many recognise that the majority ethno-tradition forms part of the myth-symbol complex of the nation. Consider the following question, asked of 67 British Sikhs: ‘A travel maga- zine published a list of things that tourists from India found distinctive about Britain. On a scale of 0 to 100, how British do you feel when you think of each of the following (0 = not at all British, 100 = very British)’. Two questions in- cluded ‘the mix of different people living in Britain’ and ‘the appearance of many British people: pale skin, blue eyes and red or light hair’. The former elic- ited a 65/100, but the latter still ranked a 50/100, the same as the Royal Fam- ily and above South Asian British reference points such as Chicken Tikka Masala, the television series Goodness Gracious Me or Sikh British broadcast personality Hardeep Kohli. What is especially interesting is the relationship between the two measures, which is not statistically significant. As the top right quadrant of Figure 3 shows, many British Sikhs identify simultaneously with both multi-ethnic Britain and an ethnic tradition of White Britishness. Or consider the way Rachid Kaci, a French conservative politician of Alge- rian descent identifies with the ethno-traditions of France: ‘The Gauls … are our collective ancestors, since they inaugurated … [French] history down to © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 442 Eric Kaufmann & Andrea Ballatore Figure 3. British Sikh’s feeling of British identity with each symbol. Source: Gorby Jandu, survey of British Sikhs, November 2017–February 2018. N = 67. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] our days, via Clovis, Charles Martel …’ (Lav 2007). Likewise, consider the roughly thirty per cent of Latinos and Asians who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. In the aftermath of the Charlottesville riots in August 2017, fifty-three per cent of nearly 300 Latino and Asian Trump voters agreed that America should ‘protect and preserve its white European heritage’ – similar to White Trump voters.1 Moreover, in my survey experiment examining skills versus nu- merical preferences (Kaufmann 2018), I found that when I flagged to non- White British respondents that immigration would bring a decline in White British share by the year 2060, this led minority Leave (but not Remain) voters to increase their support for reducing immigration from fifty to sixty-three per cent. The shift induced among conservative minority voters was not as large as among White Britons but reveals an important strain of ethno-traditional nationalism that chimes with evidence from other small-scale data presented earlier showing minority conservatives to be more restrictionist than White liberals. These conservative responses are consistent with the position that an arche- typal Briton has British ancestry (or that a typical American is White, Ameri- can Indian or Black, has an Anglo surname and is Protestant). Yet someone without these traits is an equal member of the nation. The ethnic majority (or established groups) is part of what makes the nation distinct but is not a sine qua non of membership. Having said this, it should be noted that minori- ties tend to be less attached to ethno-traditions than members of ethnic major- ities. For example, only eighteen per cent of non-White Britons replied that © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration 443 having British ancestry was very or fairly important for being ‘truly British’ compared to sixty per cent of White Britons. In MTurk and Prolific Academic surveys, I conducted in January 2017, I find that minority Trump voters ex- press less sadness (32–48/100) at the impending minority status of White Americans than White Trump voters (54–66/100) but considerably more than White Clinton voters (20/100).2 In other words, minorities can be ethno- traditional nationalists, but ethnic majorities are more likely to be. Ideology seems to matter more than ethnicity in the US than Britain. An ethno-tradition of nationhood consists of the existence of a particular configuration of ethnic groups, often including an ethnic majority – because eighty per cent of the world’s states have one (Vanhanen 1999). The majority is an especially central component of ethno-traditional nationalism in the most homogeneous world regions: East Asia, Western Europe and North Africa. The ethnic majority in turn orients towards ‘traditional’ symbolic elements such as physical appearance, religion, language and surname. These may de- fine group boundaries but not always: in other cases, they merely define an ar- chetype, leaving group boundaries hazy, as in the Turkish–Kurdish case. Public opinion on immigration and national identity Many populist right voters do not believe that one must be a member of the ethnic majority to be a citizen. Yet they consider the majority ethnie to be an important aspect of the national tradition and seek to limit immigration to protect it. Such voters, I would argue, tend to favour immigrant assimila- tion, not expulsion. There is thus an important distinction to be drawn between a closed ethnic nationalism on the one hand, which seeks to halt or reverse mi- gration, and ethno-traditional nationalism on the other, which is about slowing the pace of change. This is not to say ethnic nationalism does not exist in the West. Radicals in- sist on repatriating immigrants, which in Britain was a mantra not only of the far right National Front (NF) and British National Party (BNP) but also for the right-wing of the Conservative Party. Until the late 1980s, the Conservative right’s Immigration and Repatriation Policy Committee seriously explored the idea of encouraging hundreds of thousands of non-White British residents to go ‘home’. Today, the BNP advocates ‘generous grants to those of foreign de- scent who are resident here and who wish to leave permanently’.3 For Greg Johnson, an American Alt-Right figurehead: ‘If it was not too much trouble for all these people to come here … it will not be too much trouble for them to go back’. This view contrasts with those on the ‘left’ of the Alt-Right who merely wish to stop immigration (Hawley 2017: 16). However, in both cases, there is a view that those outside the dominant ethnie cannot be members of the nation even if they are permitted to reside in the country. In addition, these movements oppose interracial marriage and assimilation. These far right ac- tors nicely fit Kohn’s, and later Brubaker’s, definition of ethnic nationalism. © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 444 Eric Kaufmann & Andrea Ballatore The populist right – at least in terms of its rhetoric and mass support – can- not be viewed the same way. It may be that populist right leaders and cadres entertain ethnic nationalist views – though many have minority candidates which problematises this. Regardless, their messaging, and their voters, do not readily slot into the ethnic/civic approach. Let us begin with anti- immigration survey respondents rather than populist right supporters, as this is the pool from which populist right voters tend to be drawn. In the 1991– 2008 WVS across Western Europe, North America and Australia (‘the West’), there is an even split between those who advocate ‘strict limits’ on immigration and those who say immigration should be permitted ‘where jobs [are] avail- able’. These two intermediate categories on a four-category question account for over eighty per cent of responses. Only four per cent favour a closed door and eight per cent open borders. In the 2005–2007 wave of the WVS in the West, only a third of the four per cent who said immigrants should be prohibited from coming said that ancestry was ‘very’ important as a criteria for citizenship, a further third said it was ‘rather’ important and a final third gave the pure ‘civic’ response that it was ‘not’ important. The two-thirds share for strong or moderate ethnic nationalism (ancestry ‘very’/’rather’ important) compares with a little under half ethnic na- tionalist among those favouring ‘strict limits’ and about thirty per cent ethnic nationalist for pro-immigration respondents (i.e., those saying ‘if jobs available’ or ‘anyone can come’). Meanwhile, opposition to interracial marriage is low: among Britons born after 1980, it stands at just fourteen per cent, rising to twenty-five per cent across all age groups. Among White Americans, only six- teen per cent oppose Black–White intermarriage (Ford 2014; Newport 2013). So those who call for a halt to immigration, take an ethnic view of national membership and oppose interracial marriage comprise no more than two to three per cent of the population. With a looser definition, involving some sup- port for ethnic criteria of membership, opposition to intermarriage and limited immigration, the figure may approach twenty-five per cent. However, this wider penumbra of voters does not meet the strict definition of ethnic nation- alism, which would entail exclusion or deportation of immigrants and a high priority on ethnicity as a precondition of national membership. After all, im- migrants or minorities already account for ten to thirty per cent of the popula- tion of many western nations, so ethnic nationalists would be expected to favour a complete freeze on immigration, especially if of a different race or re- ligion from the majority. Populist right voters’ continued support for at least some immigration makes it problematic to view them as ethno-nationalist. For instance, a 2017 survey of 3,600 Britons I undertook with Simon Hix and Thomas Leeper of the London School of Economics shows that the typical White British UKIP voter prefers an annual immigrant inflow of 67,000, while the average White British Leave voter wants 81,000. This is considerably less than the 300,000 in- flow, which obtained at the time, or the 193,000 sought by Remain voters but is far from zero (Hix et al. 2017). Meanwhile, just eight per cent of Leavers and © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 Ethno-traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration 445 eleven per cent of BNP or UKIP voters call for a halt to immigration. Among populist right voters across a wider range of West European countries in the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS), only nineteen per cent said that no immi- grants of a different race and religion from the majority should be admitted. The modal response on a four-category measure, at forty-six per cent, was to allow ‘a few’, while a further thirty per cent favoured ‘some’ and 4.5 per cent ‘many’. Here again, populist right voters tend to be anti-immigration but most do not favour a halt to immigration, much less repatriation. Ergo, ethnic na- tionalism does not capture the sentiment of the bulk of populist right and anti-immigration voters in the West. Ethnic assimilation A better way of thinking about many populist right voters is as ethno- traditional nationalists who seek a slower rate of ethnic change. That is, they wish to protect communities which serve as symbols of nationhood. Moreover, an important group of these supporters can be assuaged by the belief that im- migrants and their descendants are becoming part of the majority ‘us’ through intermarriage and assimilation. To illustrate: in the Yougov survey I con- ducted in August 2016, I asked British respondents about their views on immi- gration and how much they would be willing to pay to reduce immigration from the European Union (Kaufmann 2017). Those who favoured a ‘hard Brexit’ position of zero EU immigrants had to pay five per cent of their in- come, with smaller increments for lesser reductions. I divided respondents into three random categories to conduct what is known as a survey experiment. Group A read nothing before answering the questions on immigration. The second group read a ‘civic nationalist’ passage emphasising rising diversity within a secure political nationhood: Britain is changing, becoming increasingly diverse. The 2011 census shows that White British people are already a minority in four British cities, including London. Over a quarter of births in England and Wales are to foreign-born mothers. Young Britons are also much more diverse than older Britons. Just 4.5% of those older than 65 are non- white but more than 20% of those under 25 are. Minorities’ younger average age, higher birth rate and continued immigration mean that late this century, according to Professor David Coleman of Oxford University, White British people will be in the minority. We should embrace our diversity, which gives Britain an advantage in the global economy. The third group read a passage based on the observation that the ethnic major- ity absorbs immigrants and thus is continuing Britain’s ethnic traditions: Immigration has risen and fallen over time, but, like the English language, Britain’s cul- ture is only superficially affected by foreign influence. According to Professor Eric Kaufmann of the University of London, a large share of the children of European im- migrants have become White British. Historians tell us that French, Irish, Jews and pre- war black immigrants largely melted into the white majority. Those of mixed race, who © The author(s) 2019. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2019 446 Eric Kaufmann & Andrea Ballatore share common ancestors with White British people, are growing faster than all minority groups and 8 in 10 of them marry whites. In the long run, today’s minorities will be absorbed into the majority and foreign identities will fade, as they have for public fig- ures with immigrant ancestors like Boris Johnson or Peter Mandelson. Britain shapes its migrants, migration does not shape Britain. There was little difference between those who read nothing and those who read the first passage. I believe this owes much to the fact that current narratives ap- proximate the diversity-in-civic nation account. However, among those read- ing the assimilationist passage, opinion on immigration shifted in a liberal direction – the first example of a liberalising manipulation in the survey exper- iment literature (Hopkins et al. 2016). The effects were especially marked on the question of EU immigration, notably among UKIP, Leave and White working-class respondents. Thus, the proportion of UKIP voters willing to pay five per cent of their income to reduce EU immigration to zero fell from forty-five per cent among those reading the first or no passage to fifteen per cent for those who saw the second, assimilationist vignette (Kaufmann 2017). This effect is caused by exposure to a mere paragraph. A sustained ef- fort to highlight ethnic assimilation and majority ethnic continuity could argu- ably convince a wider array of populist right voters. This exercise suggests that many have a more flexible definition of ethnicity and national identity than the ethnic nationalism category allows. An explanation based on the desire to pro- tect majority ethnic preponderance or to safeguard national ethno-traditions – through both slower immigration and assimilation – fits the evidence better than an account based on Kohn-style ethnic exclusivity. Conclusion Concepts derived from periods when immigration was minimal, and when po- litical rather than cultural questions dominated nationalism theory, are not well suited to capturing the ‘new nationalism’ we see in the West today. In this paper, I make the case for a new term, ethno-traditional nationalism, which, alongside majority ethnicity, more accurately accounts for the platforms, conceptions of national membership and policy preferences of the populist right. While major- ity ethnicity is growing in importance and is a major factor behind populist right voting in the West, conservative-minded ethnic minorities may also be attached to the ethnic majority as a tradition of the nation to which they are attached. 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