Asian Migrants in Europe: the Need for a Global Perspective
Over the past ten years Asian migration to the European Union (EU) has gradually gained in importance as an area of policy making.1 The Amsterdam Treaty (1997, enacted in 1999) and the Tampere Council (1999) are the most important hallmarks of this trend: they reflect the widely felt need among policy makers at the top of the EU, in particular within the European Commission, to liberalize external migration and thus fulfil the EU’s fundamental commitment to the principles of liberal democracy (Angenendt and Hernandez, 2004, p. 3; Batistella, 2002). Nevertheless, progress is slow, and EU policies have retained their defensive character: they serve to control and restrain external migration flows rather than facilitate them (Angenendt and Hernandez, 2004, pp. 6–8; Angenendt and Kruse, 2004, pp. 100–1).
Chinese Identity in Europe
When one seeks to understand the Chinese communities as communities, the issue of identity becomes paramount. Identity (meaning the characteristics that bind people together as a group) is evasive, and yet a well established concept (see, among others, Eriksen, 1993). Ethnic identity among overseas Chinese in Europe simultaneously reflects and influences their modes of social interaction. It manifests itself in how people deal with each other; this definition reflects the need for a concept that captures changing behavioural patterns and diverse embodiments of Chineseness.
European Neutrality in Historical Perspective
This chapter places the neutrality policies of the established European neutral states—Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland—in historical context. It explores the origins of neutrality in the idea of non-belligerency in war and the history of neutrality in modern European international politics, highlighting the way in which quite a wide variety of states were or sought to be neutral at various points in the nineteenth century or the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter then shows how the Cold War division of Europe resulted in Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland (along with Yugoslavia) emerging as a distinctive neutral group of states between the two blocs. The chapter also reviews how the European neutral states’ foreign and security policies have adapted since the end of the Cold War. It finishes with some conclusions about neutrality in general and the neutrality of the established European neutral states in particular.