Integration

Given that, the terms of integration and social inclusion are often used interchangeably in juxtaposing them with assimilationist immigration ideologies, which are taken to stand as antitheses to “good” diversity, it becomes essential to clarify what we mean by them. In fact, the meaning(s) of these terms are actively debated and critically contested. An important question to consider when the term “integration” is being used, is to clarify who is supposed to be integrated to what, how and by whom? (Eriksen 2015, p.15). By taking these questions as points of departure, I suggest that the most distinctive differences between migrant integration versus inclusion will reveal themselves.

The International Organization for Migration defines integration as

“the process by which immigrants become accepted into society, both as individuals and groups” (IOM 2005, p.459), a definition echoed by Biles &

Frideres (2012) who define this “acceptance” as the end goal of a reciprocal process involving newcomers and host societies. The Finnish Integration Act of 1999 construes integration to mean the personal development of immigrants, aimed at participation in working life and society while preserving their own language and culture, as well as participating in the statutory measures of the welfare state designed to support this. The primary focus here rests on participation in the labour market as well as in welfare services (Martikainen, Valtonen & Wahlbeck 2012). Other definitions emphasize a type of civic integration which sutures economic integration to civic engagement, the latter being expressed as migrant commitments to becoming “good” citizens. Integration, in this context, is widely interpreted as demonstrating language proficiency, host country knowledge and the acceptance of a canon of liberal and social values (De Roo, Braeye & De Moor 2016). There have also been attempts to replace the problematically perceived term “integration” with words such as the Finnish kotoutominen or the Swedish att bli hemmastadd, which equate the nation with home and compare integration with making oneself at home (Salo & Sarin 2010, p.16). While commendable in recognizing the often assimilationist subtext of integration, the conflation of nation with home itself contributes to a domopolitics⁷ which can be “overtly culturalist and exclusionary, or it can fetishize integration while structurally precluding it”

(Titley & Lentin 2011, p.210). “Home” encapsulates radically different meanings than the more objectivist, democratic definitions of “nation.”

“Home” clearly implies the presence of those who occupy a privileged habitus and who decide who can stay or go or how one should behave, something which Hage (2000, p.46) refers to as governmental belonging. Here newcomers are objects to be managed, and possibly removed from the national home by those historically empowered to do so. These entitled,

7 Domopolitics is a term coined by William Walters (2004) that denotes an ominous conflation of “home”, with land and security. To guard the sanctity of “home”, security measures are employed to protect those who belong naturally, from others who do not.

Despite the hearth and home connotations, the term also subsumes meanings of taming, subduing or domesticating the Other.

often white, groups perceive themselves as enactors of a national will – a will which migrants are unable to inhabit, thereby relegating them to the margins (Sivanadan 2008).

As we return to Eriksen’s question eliciting the who, to what, how and by whom of integration, it becomes obvious that the aforementioned definitions all clearly target migrants as the who, even if a certain host society reciprocity or “tolerance” is required. The to what is also unequivocal, namely to the present host society where the structural inequalities of said society are rarely interrogated. In discussing the how, integration espouses the ideal of facilitating migrants’ participation in both public and private spheres with responsibilities shared between newcomers and the host society (Reinsch 2001, Kymlicka 2010). In practice though, this has been criticized as a thinly veiled attempt of many Western countries to assimilate cultural and other differences into the essentialist narratives of

“homogenous” national cultures, effectively revealing the hypocrisy of the

“two-way street” discourse as terminating in a one-way cul-de-sac of ethnic hierarchies and social exclusion. The domineering arguments used to justify the how of assimilative integration measures are often couched in paternalistic terms citing economic or social justifications which disenfranchise, silence and render migrants legally incompetent. The underlying attitude of “we know what’s best for immigrants” robs the latter of their critical engagement and agency creating relationships of dependence for which they are later chastised (Goldberg 1994, Pötzsch 2018). Kritnet (Netzwerk Kritische Migrations- und Grenzregimforschung), a network of critical researchers and academics examining topics of migration and border regimes, has gone so far as to depict integration as the “enemy of democracy” in an initiative entitled Demokratie statt Integration, where integration is taken to mean “das man Menschen die in diesem Land arbeiten und Kinder bekommen, alt werden und sterben, einen Verhaltenskodex aufnötigt, bevor sie gleichberechtigt dazugehören”⁸ (Kritnet). Ann Laura Stoler (2016) has gone even further in equating integration practice with neocolonialism, the result of “colonial

8 “Where integration means that people who work and have children, grow old and die in this country, have a behavioural code imposed upon them before they can belong as equals.” (author’s translation)

duress”, in which the raced work of cultural classifications and hierarchies is reproduced.

In considering the by whom of integration, many definitions perceive this too as a multifarious and reciprocal process. However, given the nationalistic interpretations of said process, the heaviest burden of proof is consistently imposed on the foreigner to demonstrate his/her assimilation into a homogenous framing of the nation (Joppke & Morawska 2014, Schinkel 2018). Integration so conceived, cements inequalities both economic and social, thereby exacerbating the social exclusion of already marginalized migrants. Another problem is that integration is often measured either as a present state or an outcome. It is assessed in educational diplomas, labour market participation, language competence etc. and thus shrouds the link between outcomes and institutional or structural arrangements (Crul & Schneider 2012). In fact, Carrera and Atger (2011) argue that when conditions for residence or access to basic fundamental rights (or both) hinge upon participation in mandatory integration programs and tests, these should be interpreted as mechanisms of exclusion rather than of integration. Other authors (see Kostakopoulou 2010, De Roo, Braeye & De Moor 2016) assert that by resorting to sanctions and controls, migrants to a large extent will not integrate, and that integration regimes paradoxically dis-integrate (Titley 2019).

They are not able to be part of the new society as equal citizens, unless – and that is the overall condition imposed to them through the civic integration policy – they fully adjust to the new society, discard their past and the place they have come from and be ‘re-socialized’ and re-educated. (De Roo, Braeye

& De Moor 2016, p.10)

While integration practices must be understood within specific national contexts instead of being compared against one single, monolithic standard (Hannah 2007), a fact also borne out in my fieldwork in Canada where integration was more positively equated with pluralist, multicultural ideals than in Finland, they do share certain similarities. The new millennium’s integrationism is commonly founded on a kind of domopolitics which sutures migrants’ adoption of “values canons” to national projects around social cohesion (Lentin & Titley 2011). Inculcating core liberal values in cultivating new kinds of citizens has become integration’s raison d’être in

the post 9/11 era (Tebble 2006). This includes defining which expressions of diversity are desirable and conversely, which are undesirable. The

“good” in diversity is anchored in shared liberal values, while the “bad” is typified as ethnic or racial separateness (e.g. migrant community activism) and decried as ghettoization. The “bad” includes overt exercises of critical citizenship such as participating in adversarial political activism to challenge burka bans, for example. It essentially encompasses all that which eludes sanction and control von oben (Fortier 2010). Invoking liberal values as national values can exhibit essential features of nationalism that function as boundary mechanisms and as a means of “excluding to include” migrant minorities. You exclude their voices, their agency, and their diversity in efforts to “include” (Boucher 2015).

There are those who question not only the extent to which “we” want

“them” to integrate but also if “we” wish that at all. These theorists argue that migration worries may in fact mask fears of “real” integration (Lentin

& Titley 2011, Beauzamy & Féron 2012). On the one hand, “we” must be seen to want to integrate “them” while needing to simultaneously reaffirm the “truth” of their unintegrability in order to justify their illiberal treatment. Christian Joppke (2009) posits that these integration efforts reimagined as a new civic integrationism are aimed at a compliance with values, not their internalization. The projected image of compulsion and compliance is more important than the actual efficiency of integration measures as long as apprehensions of migrant unintegrability justify their continued existence. By placating “white worries” in demonstrating control, while migrants demonstrate compliance, integration really does become a “two-way street.” The “real” integration alluded to above is that which newcomers construct as autonomous subjects outside of the supervisory auspices of the state. It is expressed in the quotidian negotiations of everyday living within neighbourhoods, schools and communities which weave unsanctioned branchworks of belonging. Hage (2000) argues that it is this “organic integration” evolving independently of governmental control which autochthonous groups try to prevent through the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion. One could go a step further and posit that this fear of real integration extends to migrants actually making use of critical citizenship practices which lay claim to constitutionally enshrined democratic rights and freedoms as a way of challenging

dominant views of belonging. After all, what would happen if they took our liberal assurances of egalitarianism seriously?

Before I commence with a discussion of the different conceptualizations of inclusion, and as a way of bringing this examination of integration to a close, it may be helpful to explore where these concepts diverge. Integration is often associated with being imposed or facilitated from without rather than from within (e.g. via focusing on individual and community agency, needs and competences). It targets integrating the migrant Other, not general societal transformation. With the aim of inculcating shared values defined by a Leitkultur⁹ in order to achieve social cohesion and thereby social security, it has often been portrayed as “the final step en route to assimilation” (Ratcliffe 2000, p.171).