In this article, I advocate the reconceptualisation of ‘integration as a two-way process’. I argue that integration is, fundamentally, an issue of relational inequality, and conceptualising it as a one-way process constitutes problems of undesirability and infeasibility. I show the theoretical hiatus which characterises many dominant approaches to the two-way process, which leads scholars to build their work on internal contradictions and to implicitly (and often unintentionally) feed into a one-way integration discourse. I argue that as long as conceptualisations of integration as a two-way process reinforce a boundary between ‘people who integrate’ and ‘people who do not integrate’, they are unfit to avoid the problems of one-wayness which they intended to overcome in the first place. In the last part of the article, I put forward some initial building blocks for a new theoretical framework of ‘integration as a two-way process’ which is more attentive to the relational social processes that constitute integration.
In this essay, I respond to Schinkel's recent statement that 'any claim and practice that concerns 'integration' should be the object of research, rather than the project of research' (2018, p. 8). Although I agree with Schinkel that there are problematic practices of integration research, I do not agree that integration cannot be used as an analytical concept with heuristic value. In his critical analysis of how 'integration' is (ab)used as a political project, Schinkel seems to claim that there is no way to think of integration outside this problematic discourse. I argue that the concept of relational integration enables us to do just that by solving the most fundamental conundrum presented in his critique: that the concept of integration exempts 'nonmigrants', and places migrants outside society.
In this paper, we address the ambivalence in European immigrant integration discourses toward the political participation of immigrants. We show how this ambivalence manifests in what we call a 'participation paradox', which is constituted by two apparently conflicting, but potentially mutually reinforcing characteristics of the discourse. The first emphasizes the need for immigrants to be active in order to attain a well-integrated society and wellfunctioning democratic polity; the second is a call for the protection of liberal democratic institutions from the alleged 'illiberal threats' that migrants pose to society. Immigrant participation is thus both demanded and feared. Using illustrations from Denmark, we show two different ways in which this paradox plays out in practice: i) the fear of participation results in debates around the general desirability of immigrant participation; and ii) the perceived threat of 'undesired participation' reinforces the demand for immigrants to be 'good' citizens by participating in a 'civic' way. In these cases, the content of immigrant participation is discursively restricted. We end the paper by exploring the consequences of the paradox in terms of the democratic position of immigrants.
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