Immigration is one of the most controversial and divisive topics in Western democracies. There is always an audience for works that seek to bring order to the reasons that things are the way they are, and The Politics of Immigration is a contribution to this quest to help make sense of the multifaceted nature of the politics of immigration. James Hampshire proposes an explanatory framework that could help decode the factors behind the seemingly contradictory patterns in the politics of immigration.

Hampshire argues that the conflicting imperatives for immigration policymaking result from four different facets of the liberal state: representative democracy (which accounts for left/right views on immigration, prevalent anti-immigrant public opinion, and party politics); constitutionalism (which establishes certain liberal principles on individual rights, family reunion etc.); capitalism (which generates different needs for migrant labor in different economic sectors); and nationhood (and subsequent definitions of nation and nationalism). This framework, introduced in Chapter 1, forms the basis of the book. In clear and jargon-free prose, the following chapters unpack and examine various policy areas and themes according to this framework. What emerges at the end, however, is not a coherent picture claiming to capture a key causal dynamic of immigration while other relevant dynamics are held constant. Instead of a ceteris paribus conclusion, the author provides us with a rough compass to navigate large sections of this maze.

Pity we do not get enough books like this anymore. The Politics of Immigration provides a comprehensive picture of the topic through various disciplinary, theoretical, and substantive angles. So the treatment is both more rigorous and in depth than a regular textbook. But neither is the book a standard research monograph devoted to investigating one facet of a substantive topic through a hypothesized perspective derived from the theoretical literature with a carefully calibrated research methodology designed to this end. Unlike most research monographs, there is no single proposed causal relationship that defines the book; the topic is approached through various perspectives put forward by the author. It thus occupies the middle ground where knowledge and reasoning, description and explanation, go hand in hand. The relevant scholarly literature forms the foundation for the various perspectives Hampshire uses as his framework, but all this is done without losing sight of the substantive context of the politics of immigration in the Western world. The four-faceted framework is not a neat one that delivers easy answers, but rather a rough yet thoughtful one that tells us where the answers—across time and place—might be. This can be seen as a liability by some readers used to the stylized all-things-being-equal certainty of most research monographs. This reviewer is of the opposite opinion. For junior political scientists entering the field and senior ones looking for a competent and reliable overview of the scholarship on the topic, Hampshire provides a welcome step toward mapping out the politics of immigration and its inherent contradictions and complexities.

The starting point for the map is the liberal state. The state is the fulcrum of immigration and emigration, states are the ones that make and implement immigration policies, and the international system itself is based on state sovereignty. It is for this reason that the narrative framing the book rests on the four facets of contemporary liberal statehood (representative democracy, constitutionalism, nationhood, and capitalism). As part of the representative democracy facet, public opinion and party politics generate pressures toward restriction. Prevailing ideas on national identity and nationalism also tend to support closure. Liberal norms and values now firmly embedded in the constitutional orders and civil societies of the Western world present the opposing side. Add to this the dynamics of advanced capitalism that naturally favor openness. The way the four facets interact influences the way the politics of immigration unfold. The representative democracy and nationhood facets had historically always favored closure, but how this is expressed has changed due to the consolidation of liberal norms and values in public life. Instead of race, we now hear culture-based arguments or seemingly “progressive” ones criticizing Islam as a religion, rather than openly targeting Muslims as individuals.

Developments that took place after the book’s publication tend to corroborate Hampshire’s analysis: The leader of the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), Geert Wilders, was riding high in the polls for a long while as long as his message was one against what was seen to be a backward and oppressive religion. Of course, since the debate was not over comparative theology but immigration, the coded message easily translated into a message against Muslims in the Netherlands without offending liberal sensitivities, making Wilders an acceptable coalition partner to the two mainstream parties, Christian Democrat CDA and right liberal VVD. Buoyed by high poll ratings, Wilders soon let his guard down. In the run-up to the March 2014 local elections, he led the party faithful in a chant calling for the Netherlands to be rid of Moroccans. This exposed the naked xenophobia behind the party program, and led to a subsequent loss of vote for the party.

The individual chapters aim to bring all aspects of the politics of immigration together under one roof, but perhaps the decision to bring in regionalism, bilateralism, and multilateralism stretches the narrative a little bit. The book’s strongest chapters are the ones on citizenship and migrant integration. Hampshire sacrifices neither breadth nor depth in exposing how multidimensional and complex both concepts are. The caveat against quick public policy fixes is a particularly sobering point: “[T]o the frustration of governments, integration is not something that can be facilitated, or for that matter hindered, by pulling a few clearly labeled policy levers” (p. 154).

In sum, The Politics of Immigration is a compact book that seeks to make sense of the contradictions and paradoxes of a policy area high on the agenda of all liberal democracies, but it is more than an unstructured collection of everything that matters. Hampshire proposes the use of four facets of liberal democracy as a rough compass to help navigate the politics of immigration in different policy areas, during different times, and in different countries. In fact, the subtitle Contradictions of the Liberal State best captures the book’s main contribution to the literature, but the publisher has somehow decided to leave this helpful and memorable subtitle off the cover. The title is descriptively accurate in general terms, but unfortunately a little uninspiring and forgettable. The book itself, however, is an important and memorable contribution to scholarly thinking on the contradictions of liberal immigration policy.