The return of assimilation? Changing perspectives on immigration and its sequels in France, Germany, and the United States

This article argues that the massive differentialist turn of the last third of the twentieth century may have reached its peak, and that one can discern signs of a modest “return of assimilation”. The article presents evidence of this from the domain of public discourse in France, public policy in Germany, and scholarly research in the US. Yet what has “returned” is not the old, analytically discredited and politically disreputable “assimilationist” understanding of assimilation, but a more analytically complex and normatively defensible understanding. The article concludes by specifying the ways in which the concept of assimilation has been transformed.