Nativism is a political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native-born or indigenous people over those of immigrants, tm including opposition to immigration.
Definition According to Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia professor, nativism is a largely American notion that is rarely debated in Western Europe or Canada; the word originated with mid-19th-century political parties in the United States, most notably the Know Nothing party, which saw Catholic immigration from nations such as Germany and Ireland as a serious threat to native-born Protestant Americans. In the United States, nativism does not refer to a movement led by Native Americans, also referred to as American Indians. Rather, it denotes a movement to protect the interests of people descended from the founding generations of the United States. In the 2020s the designation of "Heritage American" has been used to encompass people who can trace their roots to the American Civil War period or to when the United States was established, and are thus descended from the "founding stock" of the country; this designation has been described as a nativist concept. While it primarily refers to offspring of original American settlers of 17th-century Anglo-Protestant and later 18th-century Scotch-Irish descent who founded the United States, it can also include Indigenous Americans and descendants of slaves who have been present in the country since those times. However, according to some American proponents of nativism such as Matt Walsh, the fact that the United States was primarily founded by people of European descent grants them a superior claim over being native to the country, because before their arrival and effort the United States as such did not exist. The concept of "Heritage American" includes not just demographic heritage but also cultural and aesthetic values developed by the settlers which are considered as foundational to the Americana culture.
Causes
According to Joel S. Fetzer, opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has especially been studied in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in continental Europe. Thus, nativism has become a general term for opposition to immigration which is based on fears that immigrants will "distort or spoil" existing cultural values. In situations where immigrants greatly outnumber the original inhabitants,D. Groenfeldt, "The future of indigenous values: cultural relativism in the face of economic development," Futures Volume 35, Issue 9, November 2003, pp. 917–29 nativists seek to prevent cultural change.
Beliefs that contribute to anti-immigration sentiment include:Anbinder, (2006); Barkan, (2003); Betz,tm (2007); Higham, (1955); Lucassen, (2005); Palmer, (1992); and Schrag, (2010)
Economic Employment: The belief that immigrants acquire jobs that would have otherwise been available to native citizens, limiting native employment, and the belief that immigrants also create a surplus of labor that results in lowered wages. Government expense: The belief that immigrants do not pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the services they require. Welfare: The belief that immigrants make heavy use of the social welfare systems. Housing: The belief that immigrants reduce vacancies, causing rent increases. Cultural Language: The belief that immigrants isolate themselves in their own communities and refuse to learn the local language. Culture: The belief that immigrants will outnumber the native population and replace its culture with theirs. Crime: The belief that immigrants are more prone to crime than the native population. Patriotism: The belief that immigrants damage a nation's sense of community based on ethnicity and nationality. Environmental Environment: The belief that immigrants increase the consumption of limited resources. Overpopulation: The belief that immigration contributes to overpopulation. Decolonization: The belief that immigrants or their native descendants colonize (inhabit) land area independently in conflict with the interests of an exceptionally native population.Sharma, Nandita. "Migrants and indigeneity: Nationalism, nativism and the politics of place." Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies. Routledge, 2019. 246-257.
Hans-Georg Betz examines three facets of nativism: economic, welfare, and symbolic. Economic nativism preaches that good jobs ought to be reserved for native citizens. Welfare nativism insists that native citizens should have absolute priority in access to governmental benefits. Symbolic nativism calls on the society and government to defend and promote the nation's cultural heritage. Betz argues that economic and welfare themes were historically dominant, but that since the 1990s symbolic nativism has become the focus of radical right-wing populist mobilization.Hans-Georg Betz, "Facets of nativism: a heuristic exploration" Patterns of Prejudice (2019) 53#2 pp 111-135.Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (1994).
By country and region Africa South Africa
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence in South Africa notably surged in 2026, driven by civic groups and vigilante organizations demanding the immediate departure of foreign nationals from other African countries. More than 160,000 foreign nationals, primarily from neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi, were displaced or forced to flee due to safety concerns. Movement groups like Operation Dudula have blamed foreign workers for depressing wages and overwhelming public services.
Although since the Khosa Case (2004), in which the Constitutional Court of South Africa established it was illegal to exclude permanent residents from the social welfare system, researchers have found that that several municipalities still use citizenship as a precondition for accessing welfare services. In the City of Johannesburg, for example, such policy positions are argued to be informed by anti-foreigner sentiments. Oliver Fuo, a South African professor of law, argues:South African Ministers and local government leaders have resorted to a nativistic discourse to address competition over limited welfare services and to shield themselves for the failures of the State to achieve the large-scale egalitarian transformation envisaged by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
Asia-Pacific Australia
Many Australians opposed the influx of Chinese immigrants at time of the nineteenth-century gold rushes. When the separate Australian colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, the new nation adopted "White Australia" as one of its founding principles. Under the White Australia policy, entry of Chinese and other Asians remained controversial until well after World War II, although the country remained home to many long-established Chinese families dating from before the adoption of White Australia. By contrast, most Pacific Islanders were deported soon after the policy was adopted, while the remainder were forced out of the canefields where they had worked for decades.After 1905, 4000 "Kanakas" were repatriated and the remaining 2500 were pushed out of the canefields by labour unions. Doug Munro, "The Labor Trade in Melanesians to Queensland: An Historiographic Essay," Journal of Social History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Spring, 1995), pp. 609–27
Antipathy of native white Australians toward British and Irish immigrants in the late 19th century was manifested in a new party, the Australian Natives' Association.Charles S. Blackton, "Australian Nationality and Nativism: The Australian Natives' Association, 1885–1901," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Mar., 1958), pp. 37–46 in JSTOR
Since early 2000, opposition has mounted to asylum seekers arriving in boats from Indonesia.
Pakistan
The Pakistani province of Sindh has seen nativist movements, promoting control for the Sindhi people over their homeland. After the 1947 Partition of India, large numbers of Muhajir people migrating from India entered the province, becoming a majority in the provincial capital city of Karachi, which formerly had an ethnically Sindhi majority. Sindhis have also voiced opposition to the promotion of Urdu, as opposed to their native tongue, Sindhi.
These nativist movements are expressed through Sindhi nationalism and the Sindhudesh separatist movement. Nativist and nationalist sentiments increased greatly after the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971.
Taiwan Taiwan nativist literature (鄉土文學) is a genre of Taiwanese literature that was born in the 1920s, the Taiwan under Japanese rule. Taiwan nativist literature was suppressed by the rise of Japanese fascism in 1937, and after the surrender of Japan, it was suppressed by the White Terror of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and began to gain attention again in the 1970s.
After the Chinese Civil War, Taiwan became a sanctuary for Chinese nationalists who followed a Western ideology, fleeing from communists. The new arrivals governed through the Kuomintang until the 1970s. Taiwanese identity constructed through literature in the post-civil war period led to the gradual acceptance of Taiwan's unique political destiny. This led to a peaceful transition of power from the Kuomintang to the Democratic Progressive Party in the 2000s. A-chin Hsiau (Author of Politics and Cultural NativismA-chin Hsiau, Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan: Youth, Narrative, Nationalism (Columbia University Press, 2021).) claims the origins of Taiwanese national identity to the 1970s, when youth activism transformed society, politics and culture which some are still present.Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, The great exodus from China: Trauma, memory, and identity in modern Taiwan (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Americas Brazil
The Brazilian elite desired the racial whitening of the country, similarly to Argentina and Uruguay. The country encouraged European immigration, but non-white immigration always faced considerable backlash. On 28 July 1921, representatives Andrade Bezerra and Cincinato Braga proposed a law whose Article 1 provided: "The immigration of individuals from the black race to Brazil is prohibited." On 22 October 1923, representative Fidélis Reis produced another bill on the entry of immigrants, whose fifth article was as follows: "The entry of settlers from the black race into Brazil is prohibited. For Asian [immigrants] there will be allowed each year a number equal to 5% of those residing in the country.(...)".RIOS, Roger Raupp. Text excerpted from a judicial sentence concerning crime of racism. Federal Justice of 10ª Vara da Circunscrição Judiciária de Porto Alegre, 16 November 2001 (Accessed 10 September 2008)
In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were negative feelings toward the communities of German, Italian, Japanese, and Jewish immigrants, who conserved their languages and cultures instead of adopting Portuguese and Brazilian habits (so that nowadays, Brazil has the most communities in the Americas of Venetian speakers, and the second-most of German), and were seen as particularly likely to form ghettos and to have high rates of endogamy (in Brazil, it is regarded as usual for people of different backgrounds to marry), among other concerns.