Is it really about values? Civic nationalism and migrant integration

Abstract

ABSTRACT Migrant integration is a pressing policy concern, and the perception that newcomers are not integrating has led to a growing backlash against migration. One outcome is ‘civic integration’ policies, according to which the most important mechanisms of integration are language training, employment counselling, and especially the inculcation of liberal-democratic values. Few authors, however, have addressed the fact that these policies are essentially civic nationalist ideology applied to migrants, and represent the most recent chapter in a long-standing debate over the relationship between majorities and minorities that focused on intra-state nationalist conflict during the 1990s. Civic integration policies reflect the self-representation of majorities, and are both politically and ontologically problematic. First, in many cases they seem best understood as a kind of symbolic politics that is more about who gets in than how they are integrated. Second, civic nationalism is based on a theory of nations and nationalism that treats these as solely ideological phenomena, and ignores the social bases of integration. ‘Shared values’ are a product of that process, not a mechanism for its achievement.