As liberal democracies struggle to understand the potential for minority ethnic groups holding very different belief systems to become incorporated into mainstream society, this book illuminates complex dynamics of political integration that will cause scholars and practitioners to rethink their expectations. Rahsaan Maxwell asks why some migrants of non-European origin are better integrated than others. Although it is hardly surprising that integration paths of migrant groups of different origins would vary, the treatment of this question introduces timely theoretical insights on the factors that facilitate minority migrant integration. The study employs data on national and local political representation to compare integration outcomes across migrant groups within countries as well as across countries. But Ethnic Minority Migrants in Britain and France is not only about political integration: The analysis disaggregates the experience of integration in a way that spans social science disciplines and demonstrates how social segregation, by facilitating coethnic social networks, paradoxically may contribute to political and economic integration.

Maxwell seeks to explain why migrants to Britain and France who arrived socially better integrated have lost that advantage over time compared to less socially integrated ethnic minority groups. In comparing integration outcomes across groups of ethnic minority migrants in both countries, the author, rather than treating integration as a single phenomenon, evaluates social, economic, and political dimensions of integration separately to consider the relationship among these forms of integration for different groups. Social integration is assessed in terms of linguistic fluency, shared cultural and religious practices, intermarriage rates, and dispersed residential patterns; the absence of these characteristics is taken to be segregation. The measure of economic integration uses indicators of socioeconomic status, and that of political integration combines the proportion of elected officials who are coethnics, political participation, and access to political resources (p. 13). This approach to integration leads to the observation that more socially integrated groups appear to be less or no better integrated economically and politically than other groups. The explanation for this counterintuitive outcome stresses a positive side of segregation.

Maxwell’s argument hinges on the role of social segregation in promoting coethnic ties that enhance the capacity for group mobilization; conversely, social integration limits and weakens those ties. The “integration trade-off” refers to socially integrated groups’ lack of group-mobilization capacity and consequent disadvantages in seeking political or economic integration. Contrasting experiences among Caribbean, Indian, and Bangladeshi/Pakistani immigrant communities in Britain and among Caribbean and Maghrebian migrants in France provide evidence for this trade-off. (Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are treated as a single group for historical reasons.) Maxwell shows that in both countries, Caribbean immigrants, who were more socially integrated and had better employment opportunities on arrival due to centuries-long colonial legacies, have been less politically integrated than the other ethnic groups studied and that their early economic advantages have faded (pp. 35–36).

Chapters 3 and 4 address in depth the integration trade-off concerning economic success, highlighting how coethnic networks have had a differential effect, but the chapters on political integration give the book its greatest force. These use meticulous research to support the claim that the deficit of coethnic networks entailed by social integration poses obstacles to political integration. Chapter 5 treats the political representation of the ethnic minority groups studied, and Chapters 6 and 7 present in-depth local case studies of immigrant mobilization, with one chapter for Britain and one for France. The data on local electoral outcomes are especially noteworthy. The author assembled data for a sampling of local councils where ethnic minorities are most likely to be elected—100 councils in England and Wales and 125 councils in cities with populations of more than 50,000 in France—to compare each groups’ extent of representation by coethnic local elected officials (pp. 102–4). On British local councils, Bangladeshis/Pakistanis were the best represented, followed by Indians; and strikingly less well represented were Caribbeans, even though the pattern was different when it came to members of Parliament (pp. 105–7). In France, Maghrebians were better represented than Caribbeans (pp. 105–7). The case studies of local mobilization further illustrate the integration trade-off by tracing efforts by the respective ethnic groups to obtain public resources from local governments for group-specific projects, such as a community center and a permit for building a temple. These explorations provide a fine-grained understanding of political integration and go well beyond turnout studies by others cited early in the book (p. 16).

The study’s theoretical contribution lies in differentiating among dimensions of integration to account for outcomes that prevailing approaches have difficulty explaining. Although a dominant line of argument anticipates that integration will gradually occur across generations, this is not always the case, especially for groups whose religious heritage strongly differs from that which is dominant in the host country; Maxwell’s analysis explains in what senses integration may or may not occur for a group over the long term. As well, the author provides a new slant on debates that stresses the obstacles to long-term integration in the form of unequal access to education, economic conditions, and discrimination by showing how social segregation can moderate the impact of these barriers. His segregation-driven model incorporates contingency by including these factors and recognizes that the “extent to which social integration leads to trade-offs depends on discrimination and access to independent financial resources” (p. 4), meaning that if discrimination and resources are not problems, then the reduced capacity for group mobilization associated with social integration should not matter.

This ambitious book promises to encourage a vigorous intellectual debate, no doubt one that will lead to further research on integration trade-offs to explore the scope of their applicability. The evidence provided for the trade-off between social and political integration in France and Britain is reasonably strong despite the differences between the two countries, and in Chapter 8 the author finds moderate support in briefly applying the analysis to the Netherlands and the United States. His overall framework is quite broad, however, and for this reason it will likely stimulate further research on related questions, among them the following: When are social segregation and coethnic mobilization associated with political integration, and when do they lead to rejection of a political course of action? Political integration as examined for the book is closely linked to group political mobilization, but what sorts of alternatives do relatively more socially integrated minority migrant groups find to participate politically, and with what degree of effectiveness? Finally, what does socioeconomic diversity within a minority migrant group mean for groups’ capacity to mobilize and for consequent integration trade-offs?

Ethnic Minority Migrants in Britain and France will have an impact by taking the discussion of minority migrant politics in a new direction. It challenges broad generalizations of immigrant politics by providing a rich theoretical and empirical account of the dynamics of political incorporation of different ethnic minority groups in Britain and France and beyond. The research on the local political representation of immigrant groups will make this an extremely valuable book for those working in the fields of British and French politics. For political scientists and sociologists who address immigration, race, and ethnicity, the book will spur exploration of the relationship between coethnic networks and the multiple dimensions of integration.