Revisiting the European Union framework on immigrant integration: The European integration forum as a technology of agency

Abstract

In the last 15 years, a European Framework on Immigrant Integration has been devel oped through soft law tools, aiming to create a common understanding o f the concept and promoting the coordination, funding, and exchange o f best practices among states, local administrations, and nongovernmental actors. In this article, we first contextualize the emergence o f immigrant integration policies at the European Union level. We then examine the principal European Union documents on this issue, paying special attention to the link between integration and immigrant participation. Finally, based on an empir ical study, we analyze, from the perspective o f governmentality, the European Integration Forum, an apparatus considered the " last w ord " in immigrant integration policies at the European Union level.

Elective affinities between racism and immigrant integration policies: a dialogue between two studies carried out across the European Union and Spain

“…An example of how integration policies not only downplay but (re)produce racism, is given by the discourse on European and national values emerging from numerous documentsstarting with the CBPs n. 2 and 4-. It is true that there is a 'struggle for the meaning' about the interpretation of these values, between those who prioritize 'essentialist'/'culturalist' contents -emphasizing 'habits' and 'traditions'-and others that refer to a more 'civic'/'political' concept of integration -shifting attention to issues such as 'democracy' and 'human rights'- (Arribas et al 2014 The first edition of the Manual interprets the content of these values in a more ambivalent way:…”