Civic Integration Policy in Europe between Politics and Law: Diversity within Convergence

Abstract

The central theme of the thesis lies on the convergent trend of European immigrant integration policies into so called ‘civic integration’. Although researches on civic integration often mention nationalistic, exclusionary, and control oriented characters of the policy, the thesis aims to provide more nuanced understanding of civic integration by conducting two strands of researches. First, he conducted a comparative analysis of party politics in two countries- Germany and the Netherlands. In these case studies, he showed the introduction of civic integration could be based on broad consensus from left to right wing. Second, he analyzed how EU institutions reacted to the developments of civic integration at the national level, and how the combination of ECJ rulings and the European Commission effectively had cut down national discretions to take exclusionary policies towards immigrants. Combining those results, he argued the emergence of new model of immigrant integration in Europe.