Migrant Integration in a Changing Europe

In recent years, many prominent figures have spoken publicly about immigrants’ “duty to integrate”. Tony Blair of the UK Labour Party delivered a speech in 2006 where he urged immigrants to assume ‘their duties’ and called for shared common British values. The French Minister for EU Affairs and the Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism each reminded immigrants that rights come with duties to the host society. Pope Benedict too preached migrants that they have duties in the country in which they settle and that they should respect the laws and the national identity of their new society. Yet while the consensus that migrants bear no rights alone but that they come with duties to integrate was growing stronger, ideals of what integration were also transformed. Multiculturalism, however fragmented or poorly implemented it was in practice, was unequivocally deserted by the same political leaders who spoke of the duty to integrate. This abandonment signals a departure from a post-war consensus for liberalism.of building in protections to support and safeguard cultural differences, promote respect for the other and instill tolerance in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The project of European integration sought to bring together different cultures from across the continent is in itself a multicultural project. It is for these reasons that desertion from such principles, is a step backward for Europeanisation as well as for what is expected of migrants. For Angela Merkel, the model of people from other different culture living happily side by side did not work, and declared its death: this form of multiculturalism has ‘failed, utterly failed’ The Guardian printed the news as ‘German multiculturalism has failed’, distancing itself from advancing a similar faith for multiculturalism in Britain. One year later, at the Security Summit, David Cameron did precisely that: he revoked multiculturalism as we knew it and announced the world the birth of muscular liberalism – in effect a new compromise exchanging liberty for security which targeted the Muslim community. Messages from political and religious leaders respond and are indeed reinforced by public concerns about the integration of migrants. Overwhelming shares of the population think that migrants do not integrate, 41 percent in Spain and 52 percent in Italy respectively (Marshall Transatlantic Trends, 2015). The numbers-too high by any standard are to be interpreted with caution. We know little about what ‘integration’ might mean for such a large number of people. It might mean that people might have different definitions and preferences for what integration of migrants is. Equally, it might mean that the people define integration in the same way but that for some those characteristics are insufficient while for others they are sufficient. In a similar fashion, it is unclear whom they identify when they speak of the failing integration of migrants. The consistent overestimation of immigrants in society is a well studied phenomenon (for a review see Herda 2010) with wide implications. People can mistake a third generation citizen and mistake her for a migrant or vice-versa, they can not see a migrant who walks by. Deconstructing and problematizing this statistic however does not alleviate the power of such high numbers that can be read as harbingers of demoliting future tensions between migrants and natives.

In this study, I have turned the tables around from the immigrants to the state and have examined its role, capacities and commitments to immigrant integration. The state is the political representative of the host society and an agent of integration with disproportionately more institutional and financial resources than individual immigrants. Furthermore, the state is the agent of integration that has one unique ability which is key to achieving integration and which no other agent involved in this process shares, either the immigrants themselves or the host society: only the state authorities can grant rights and citizenship. Immigrants can achieve full social membership in their local communities but without also achieving the full rights of other citizens.

While this line of research highlights the role states carry in integration, it misses both the fact that state interventionism is not constant but varies significantly over time, groups, levels of decision making. This work distinguishes between states’ discretion to 1) to grant or withheld rights to certain noncitizens 2) to actively intervene in integration and introduce policies and public funds with this aim or, on the contrary, to take a laissez-faire approach. Historically, some of the migrants have simply remained at the margins of the state’s intervention in immigrant integration. European citizens, for instance, are rarely regarded as ‘migrants’ and included in integration strategies. Why do states act inconsistently when it comes to immigrant integration and intervene in different ways for different categories of migrants is a puzzle on which, hitherto, the literature has remained silent and which this book has aimed to solve.en migrants and natives.

(excerpted from conclusion)