A Long Journey of Integration

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter summarizes the interaction between integration and agency by comparing migrants’ encounters with labour markets through which their agency challenges existing discourses. The chapter investigates the complex relationship between policy discourse, gender, and class in the production of migrant agency across different countries. The gendered experiences of low labour in Denmark centre around the crucial moments of retraining for migrant women, through which they reconsider their adjustment to the labour market as ‘devoid integration’. The EU discourses of integration are further disrupted by humanitarian migrants in Scotland and Switzerland, whose encounters with the non-recognition of qualifications and inadequate social welfare contradict the ‘migrant-welcoming’ national facades. The Canadian grand discourse of ‘smooth transition’ is opposed by the analysis of aspirations that clash with outcomes such as the labour market entrance. In this connection, we can see the Italian ‘borderline’ space of the informal market, within which many legal economic migrants navigate a complex web of existing laws and informal opportunities. The comparison is amplified by a visually ‘successful’ portrait of entrepreneurial integration, which is nevertheless perceived by skilled migrants in Finland as a less desirable option. The quality of migrants’ agency thus becomes contested if they seek to progress in the labour market. An essential element in this contestation is the transnational migrants’ disagreement with official discourses of ethnic solidarity and national citizenship in the Czech Republic. The comparative analysis of these lived experiences leads toward a new understanding of ‘agency’ and ‘resilience’ in labour market integration.