Book excerpt: Immigration and Ethnic Conflict reviews the experience of post-industrial countries that have experienced large-scale movements of population since the Second World War, creating ethnically diverse multicultural societies in a context of rapid economic, technological and social change. The book uses a critical theoretical approach which emphasises the dynamic nature of the structural changes which have taken place and the interdependence of economic, political, social and psychological factors. The results of extensive comparative studies of Britain, Canada and Australia are reviewed, with special attention to questions of immigrant adaptation, refugees, racism, unemployment, ethnic nationalism and social conflict. Traditional views of immigrant assimilation are rejected in favour of one which treats immigrants and ethnic minorities as the catalysts of change in a global polity, economy and society, simultaneously united and divided by satellite communications, nuclear terror and the world population explosion.