Relational integration: from integrating migrants to integrating social relations

ABSTRACTThe conventional notion of integration as ‘immigrants becoming part of something’ has been widely criticised for its undesirable normative connotations. In response, scholars either discard the concept altogether, or they strive for a ‘non-normative approach’. In this paper, I argue that both strategies are unsatisfactory and present a third: through ameliorative conceptual analysis, I rethink the concept such that it is useful for both the normative and analytical purposes of investigating inequalities and social boundaries that so often emerge in contexts of immigration. Building on insights from political philosophy, I argue for a conception of integration problems as a subset of relational inequality. Crucially, this framework shifts the site of the integration problem and process from ‘the immigrant’, and a process that ‘immigrants’ go through, to the relations amongst all people within a society, and a process of relational change amongst them.KEYWORDS: Integrationmigrationrelational equalitypolitical theoryrelational sociology AcknowledgementsThanks to Richard Alba, Floris Vermeulen, Eric Schliesser, Rainer Forst, Luara Ferracioli, Ilaria Cozzaglio, Natalie Welfens, Fenneke Wekker and Fatiha El-Hajjari for their stimulating conversations on the concept of relational integration in various stages of the development of this framework. Thanks to Enzo Rossi en Wouter Schakel for their thoughtful feedback on previous versions of the manuscript, as well as for their overall moral support. Thanks to the participants of the Normative Orders Seminar at the Goethe University Frankfurt, and the ECPR panel on Relational Equality for their thought-provoking questions. They have furthered my thinking on this concept substantially. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their time and their valuable comments.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 I have provided a more elaborate discussion of the ways in which migration scholars use this conventional notion of ‘integration of migrants into society’, in an earlier article (Klarenbeek Citation2021).2 So, whereas some opponents have refuted integration for being an organicist term (Schinkel Citation2017), I would argue that a relational understanding of the concept actually leaves more semantical space to stay away from functionalist and organicist thinking than these alternatives do.3 See also Gassan Hage’s (Citation2000) critique on the assumptions of white supremacy in many understandings of multiculturalism.4 From the outset, the resident category will not be clear-cut. First, residency may be temporary because people are mobile. Second, under the influence of globalization, physical residency may not always be the most important determinant of who forms a community, and who is subject to which institutions and political rules (Bauböck and Guiraudon Citation2009). E-government and digital citizenship (Björklund Citation2016) provides a situation in which our classic understanding of residency may not be immediately helpful. Further, the category comprises people in very different situations: people with legal citizenship; people with a legal status as resident but no citizenship; people residing in a country without any formal permission to do so, and probably many more variations on these themes. These constitute different forms of relational integration problems with different integration dynamics. For further discussion about the foundations of ‘just membership’, see e.g. Benhabib (Citation2007) and Song (Citation2018).5 See also Haslanger’s (Citation2014) discussion on what is ‘normatively normal’.6 https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/dubbele-nationaliteit-achilleshiel-van-zelfverzekerde-arib~beab467f6/.7 https://www.groene.nl/artikel/bij-gelijke-geschiktheid-kamervoorzitter-arib.8 Recall that a relational perspective on integration is not concerned with the integration of some people ‘into’ a society, but with the integration between members of a society. Relational integration is thereby, in no way, concerned with requirements of adaptation for the protection of a specific language, as a majority cultural right.9 This approach is in line with the general starting point of relational sociology (Emirbayer Citation1997, 287). Elias illustrated the relational approach through the example of a game, which, he argued, does not just consist of players and rules that can be insulated from each other, but: ‘the changing pattern created by the players as a whole, . . . the totality of their dealings in their relationships with each other’ (Citation1978, 130). Similarly, I argue that we should confine our interest in integration processes to insulated individuals or groups, or to specific social outcomes, but instead as a configuration of people, ‘the totality of their dealings in their membership relations’.10 Note that this recognition element has been brought forward by, for example, Penninx and Garcés-Mascareñas (Citation2016) and Alba and Foner (Citation2015), but always as a condition for ‘the integration of immigrants’, thereby reducing it to an external factor See also Klarenbeek (Citation2021).11 See also Haslanger’s (Citation2022) discussion on the failures of methodological individualism.12 Potentially, the framework of relational integration could be used to investigate other forms of relational inequality beyond immigration contexts. There are many other social markers that provide foundations for oppositions between legitimate and non-legitimate members. One can think for example of homeless people, felons, or people with severe intellectual disabilities as categories designated as non-legitimate members of a society. While I focus on immigration contexts in this paper, the reader may find (aspects of) the framework to be more broadly applicable.13 See also Fraser’s (Citation2010) conception of ‘participatory parity’.14 Such analysis should not be restricted to policies that are formally designated as ‘integration policies’: policies in all kinds of areas could be scrutinised for their implications for the social standing of members.15 Although the SVR investigates both people with and without a migration background for this research, they do not take on a relational approach to integration. They use these indicators to measure the ‘integration climate’ as the environment that sets the scene for ‘the integration of immigrants’, rather than it being an aspect of integration in itself.16 Moreover, the aim of mixing may place an extra burden on people in inferior membership positions because they may lose the safety and opportunities provided by their ‘segregated’ networks. If the socially mixed environment does not provide them the advantages of relational equality, they may therefore be worse off in mixed spaces (Stanley Citation2017, 167).