Politics of (Dis)Integration – An Introduction

Abstract

Something called ‘integration’ has been an official policy goal for the last 50 years or more, at least in liberal democracies. As far as the integration of newcomers is concerned, this liberal consensus has however begun to change in the last few years. While some migrants have always been excluded from integration policies, we can now see a significant rise in the creation of barriers to their equal participation in social systems. In this chapter, we argue that such disintegration policies nonetheless remain linked to the idea of integration; and introduce ‘(dis)integration’ as an analytical tool to describe this intertwining. We thereby build on and seek to contribute to three strands of literature: civic stratification, inclusion/exclusion, and critical citizenship. In order to do this, we develop three related arguments: First, we highlight that integration is often framed in terms of limited capacity to justify accompanying measures of disintegration. Second, we explore how individuals (can) counter such disintegration measures through ‘acts of integration’ that range from adapting to legal constraints, to migrant activism and solidarity with identified others. Third, we show that the (dis)integration of some is inherently connected to the (dis)integration of society as a whole.