The normative justification of obligatory integration policies

Since the late 1990s a class of political measures that can be called “obligatory integration policies” has constantly gained importance in Europe (cf. Goodman, 2010; Goodman & Wright, 2015; Joppke, 2017; Michalowski & van Oers, 2012; Triadafilopoulos, 2011). These policies require immigrants to take certain actions or to demonstrate certain competences that, in the eyes of the host society, serve their integration.

Some of these measures are aimed at integration in a general sense. The requirement in several European states to take up residence in a particular place (“residence condition”), for instance, is intended to “facilitate the integration [of immigrants]” (EuGH Press Release No. 22/16), without specifying what integration consists in. Typically, however, these measures focus on learning the host society's language as the key to integration. In particular, many Western states prescribe some groups of immigrants to attend language classes. Often, these measures additionally seek to promote “civic” integration, for example, when integration courses encompass, beside language lessons, units about the host society's values, politics, culture, and history.

Obligatory integration policies are obligatory in the sense that they do not seek to promote attendance with incentives, but to compel it with sanctions or penalties. In case of incentives, immigrants are at liberty to respond to them or not. If, for example, the state subsidizes language courses so that the fee is very low or if the state pays grants to immigrants for successfully joining classes, many immigrants will decide to participate of their own free will. In case of obligatory integration policies, however, immigrants cannot choose whether or not they respond to an incentive; they simply have to comply with the legal obligation and any violation is deemed to be wrongdoing. In recent decades, there has been a shift in many European states from integration policies based on incentives toward obligatory integration policies. When, for instance, publicly subsidized integration courses were established in Germany in 2005, about a third of the participants in the courses were obliged to attend, whereas a majority chose voluntarily to embrace the opportunity to learn the language for a low price. The amendment of the legal rules underlying integration courses through the so-called Integrationsgesetz in 2016, lead to an increase in the share of the obligatory participants to two-thirds (193,000 persons in 2017).¹

From the point of view of normative theory, the distinction between obligatory integration policies and those merely involving incentives for voluntary compliance is of major importance. Obviously, there is nothing pro tanto unjust about states creating incentives for immigrants to integrate, as long as the incentives in question are reasonable in scope and do not involve discrimination. In contrast, obligatory integration policies raise a particular problem of justification. The obligation to attend integration courses for several months or to settle in a certain area are serious governmental impingements on the freedom of immigrants. Of course, many immigrants will not experience integration obligations as a severe intervention, but will pursue these requirements with pleasure. Some, however, will view these obligations as grave interventions to force them to do things they do not want to do.² Liberalism requires us to justify interference in the sphere of private life in a way that is acceptable even for those who experience the restrictions as an objectionable burden. States need good reasons if they prescribe to adults—and I will only address obligations of adult immigrants in this article—where they should live, how they should spend their time and in which projects they should invest their efforts.³

Yet, the justification of obligatory integration policies has not received sufficient attention in philosophy and political theory. Until now, the focus of academic debate has been on duties of the host societies toward immigrants and on balancing the cultural needs of majorities and minorities.⁴ When it comes to specific legal obligations of immigrants, only the question of whether citizenship tests can be justified has been discussed extensively.⁵ Concerning integration requirements, there are, of course, some relevant remarks in the literature (in particular, Miller, 2016a and Joppke, 2017), but, as will become clear in due course, they are not satisfactorily worked out. Most importantly, Goppel (2019) is the first author who provides a collection of all of the arguments in favor of integration requirements. However, she discusses these arguments in terms of whether deficient language skills may justify refusing immigrants an extension of permission to stay, and therefore does not offer an account of when restrictions of personal freedom are permissible on the basis of her arguments. This article is intended to fill the gap in the literature by discussing the most promising reasons that could justify a state's right to implement legal obligations to promote integration.

I will proceed as follows. In Section 1, I will briefly explain what the justification of obligatory integration policies requires within a liberal framework. Then I will proceed to discuss six possible reasons that, in my view, are the most promising candidates for such a justification: the self-interest of migrants (Section 2); respect toward the host society (Section 3); ideals of communal life (Section 4); the inevitability of communication in particular situations (Section 5); a responsibility to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system (Section 6); and, finally, integration contracts (Section 7). I will conclude that only the responsibility to avoid the need for assistance and integration contracts might justify obligatory integration policies—but solely for particular groups of immigrants.

Without doubt, most immigrants have strong self-interested reasons to integrate. They have an interest in learning the language as a means of making new friends, finding a job, being able to manage daily problems and articulating their interests in public or private discourse. Presumably, they also have self-interested reasons to learn about the host society's political system or culture to orient themselves in their new environment.

Immigrants' self-interested reasons constitute valuable aims for politics. States should accommodate the interests of immigrants because they should promote the well-being of all inhabitants. Furthermore, since many immigrants are socially disadvantaged, according special weight to the interests of immigrants will probably promote social equality.

And yet, any attempt to justify legal obligations based on reasons of self-interest faces a fundamental objection. We generally assume that persons have freedom rights to decide for themselves how to respond to self-interested reasons. Self-interested reasons are seen as a foundation of legal obligations only in exceptional situations. States might be allowed to hospitalize suicidal persons against their will, but they are certainly not allowed to obligate me to attend some advanced training, just because it is acknowledged that this training would be in my interest.⁸ Since we do not have less reason to protect immigrants against paternalism than natives, we can infer that, analogously, states cannot base obligations to integrate on immigrants' self-interest (cf. Goppel, 2019, 73 f.).

Nevertheless, there are voices in public as well as in academic debate that seek to formulate arguments based on self-interested reasons. In the literature, a special version of the argument from self-interest has been advocated.⁹ According to this version, the legal obligation to integrate is justifiable because in asymmetrical family relationships the weaker partner's willingness to integrate could be suppressed. Only a legal obligation to attend an integration course could, in particular, prevent husbands from discouraging their wives from attending such a course. As David Miller writes, “paternalism of that kind is not difficult to defend, especially when it serves to counteract pressures within the family in the case of women” (Miller, 2016a, p. 137).¹⁰

Although in this version of the argument, legal obligations to integrate certainly serve a valuable end, the argument is not convincing. The main reason is that, no more than states have a right to interfere in personal decisions regarding one's self-interest, do they have a right to interfere in the decision to accept a certain role within one's family. States have to respect the decisions of adults to join and remain in a relationship in which they are not treated as equal, and states have to respect the decisions that are made within such an asymmetrical relationship.¹¹ States do so in all other areas of life, at least as long as physical and mental health is not threatened, and so they should also do so in the context of integration. Of course, states must ensure that adults are not coerced to remain in partnerships they wish to leave. Beyond that, states must respect the choices of immigrants, including choices that restrict their own autonomy.

Moreover, most immigrants do not belong to the group of oppressed family members. Thus, even if states were permitted to impart legal obligations in the case of oppressed cohabitants, they would have to restrict the obligations to those who belong to the targeted group. Detecting who is oppressed, however, seems to be problematic from the liberal point of view, which is a further reason to refrain from the whole project of intervening in families to help the oppressed.

Hence, the argument from self-interest fails. To be sure, in a Utilitarian framework of justifying legal obligations or within some versions of Perfectionism, one might plausibly opt for obligations that serve the interests or, in particular, the autonomy of the obligated. But then, consistency would require implementing paternalistic norms in all areas of society, and not exclusively for immigrants. As long as we argue within a liberal framework, however, we could best argue that it might be a desirable side effect of legal obligations to integrate that they help to counteract short-term incentives and benefit people living in oppressive family situations (and I do not doubt that obligatory integration policies may have positive effects). However, the self-interest of those who are obligated cannot provide the normative foundation for legal obligations to integrate.

Following an important approach of the linguistic justice debate as well as an important assumption often made in public debate and legislation,¹² one might ask whether integration requirements are an implication or an ingredient of the respect that newcomers are supposed to show toward (members of) the host society. It could be argued that respect requires immigrants to show interest in the history and values of the host society, and, in particular, to learn the host society's language. Based on this assumption, states might be justified in demanding respectful behavior from the newcomers, which might entail, among other things, the right to obligate immigrants to learn the language and familiarize themselves with the host society's history.

In his book on linguistic justice, Van Parijs provides an impressive example of how language expectations are linked to mutual respect between immigrants and members of the host society. He relates the story of an American executive who has lived in Belgium, together with his family, for years. That American once remarked disgustedly about his landlord: “You'll never believe it, […] I have been renting this villa for three years now, and the owner is still not able to speak English!” (Van Parijs, 2011, p. 133). Van Parijs argues that the executive's attitude was wrong because of his “colonial” expectation that others have to adjust to his linguistic capabilities, rather than that he should adjust to theirs—I will call this an attitude of superiority. He concludes that states are justified in installing “coercive language regimes,” that is, language regimes that do not accommodate the immigrants' preferences, but expect everybody to master the official language. Although Van Parijs does not explicitly address the particular case of obligatory integration policies and, hence, does not provide an explicit justification for them, his approach is clearly sympathetic to legal obligations to learn the language.

It is worth emphasizing that we cannot in general criticize immigrants who refuse to learn the local language for displaying such an attitude of superiority (cf. Goppel, 2019, p. 68). Think, for instance, of an elderly Syrian refugee who was forced to flee to a European country. I do not think that he exhibits an attitude of superiority when, instead of learning the host society's language, he tries to communicate by signs or in an international language; nor are there other reasons why we should judge him to be in violation of what respect toward the host society requires of him. Since learning a new language might be an excessive imposition on someone in his situation, the members of the host society should try to accommodate his linguistic capabilities, rather than expect him to adopt theirs. Defenders of the respect argument, therefore, would have to define which groups of immigrants do indeed violate requirements of respect when they refuse to learn the language or to integrate in some other sense.

Most importantly, however, even if respect can be viewed as the source of a moral obligation of immigrants to integrate into the host society, states are not allowed to legally prescribe the fulfillment of that duty. Respect is mainly a matter of virtue, and not an attitude that could be legally enforced. Only in very rare cases is disrespectful behavior penalized—in particular, in case of severe insults. However, the use of the “wrong” language or a lack of motivation to learn about the history of the host society cannot reasonably be deemed to be a severe intentional insult. Just as I have to tolerate that my neighbor does not greet me, thereby showing a certain form of disrespect, host societies have to tolerate that some immigrants show disrespect, say, by displaying “colonial” behavior of the type described above.

To summarize, I believe that an attitude of respect toward the host society will rightly lead many immigrants to learn the language and to read up on its history and particularities. Nevertheless, there is no way to justify legal obligations to integrate on the basis of respect considerations.

Integration is often seen as a project that promotes ideals of how society as a whole should be. According to the argument I will now discuss, legal obligations to integrate are justified because they are means to achieve or promote such a conception of how society should be idealiter. One might think about the targeted ideal in different ways. For instance, Nils Holtug has recently argued that social cohesion should be viewed as such an ideal that might be promoted through integration.¹³ Legal integration obligations might serve social cohesion, among other things, because they help to avoid segregation, which in turn promotes trust between cultural groups. Instead of seeing social cohesion as the targeted ideal, one might consider integration policy as a defense of a society of people sharing liberal values (see Orgad, 2015; Triadafilopoulos, 2011), or as a means of promoting a society whose members share a certain cultural identity (Miller, 2000), or even as a means of promoting conditions under which society is open to further immigration in the future. Whatever you take as the targeted ideal, the structure of the argument remains the same.

This argument can be criticized in different ways. First, it is doubtful whether the supposed ideal should be regarded as valuable at all. Second, one might ask whether there is sufficient empirical evidence that legal obligations to integrate do indeed promote that ideal.¹⁴

However, I believe we should reject the argument on a more fundamental level. Even if we admit for the sake of argument that legal obligations to integrate promote some valuable ideal of communal life, they cannot be justified on that basis. First of all, in liberal societies, states generally promote ideals of communal life with incentives, and not with legal obligations. For instance, citizens are encouraged to participate in democratic debate to promote the ideal of a broad public discourse, but nobody is obliged to participate; sports clubs and voluntary services are publicly subsidized to strengthen social ties between cohabitants, but nobody is obliged to join clubs or coerced to volunteer; adult education aims to tighten democratic values in society, but no adult citizen is compelled to participate in courses where democratic values are discussed. There is no example outside the area of integration where a legal obligation is commonly regarded as being justified on the basis of its supposed contribution to a social ideal such as the ones I have mentioned.¹⁵ Hence, we should not consider the flourishing of society an aim that justifies enforceable policies.

Secondly, there is a fairness problem. Even if it were permissible for states to promote ideals of communal life by means of legal obligations, why should it only be up to immigrants to contribute to that ideal? Take, first, the case of residence requirements that serve to avoid segregation, thereby promoting social cohesion. If that aim justified states in requiring people to settle in a certain area, then this should apply to all inhabitants. In the same way as immigrants are required to settle in areas whose social and cultural environment is shaped by non-immigrants, non-immigrants who wish to move to another city could be required to settle in an area of that city that is shaped by immigrants. Take, second, language courses that aim to facilitate contacts between immigrants and non-immigrant inhabitants. If immigrants are obliged to attend a language course with the aim of promoting social contacts between immigrants and non-immigrants, it seems to be fair that non-immigrants should be obliged, for instance, to participate in civic projects that have the same aim, such as welcome cafés. If societies abstain from obligating non-immigrant inhabitants (as they do to the present day), they should also abstain from obligating immigrants.

One might consider the objection that my fairness argument overlooks the efforts regarding integration that host states and host societies contribute (and, from a moral point of view, should contribute).¹⁶ States finance integration courses, enact anti-discrimination policies, and so forth; one might argue that they thereby fulfill their part in promoting the ideal in question, whereas the immigrants fulfill their part by joining language classes or accepting settlement requirements. This objection is not convincing for two reasons. First, immigrants already contribute their fair share to the state's efforts in integration by paying taxes; there is no extra tax that only natives have to pay. If we obliged immigrants to perform additional contributions, they would be burdened twice.¹⁷ Second, it would be unfair to oblige natives only to contribute to the ideal financially (which is a minimal restriction of personal freedom), but immigrants to contribute by accepting obligations to act in certain ways. If restrictions of personal freedom are seen as unavoidable, they should be borne by all of the parties involved.

To conclude, if we wanted to defend obligatory integration policies based on ideals of communal life, we would end up by justifying obligations that differ substantially from present obligations to integrate insofar as they would burden both groups, immigrants as well as non-immigrants. If states are not willing to take that step, we should abstain from using the promotion of ideals of communal life to justify legal obligations to integrate. If states have, however, a right to oblige immigrants to integrate based on some other reason, they might be well advised to make use of that right also to promote ideals of communal life.

Instead of targeting ambitious ideals of communal life, one might focus on basic demands of what living together in a society requires. Not all dimensions of integration are linked to basic demands, but at least knowledge of the official language is. Unavoidably, immigrants will from time to time encounter situations where communication with members of the host society is necessary. Not being able to communicate in these unavoidable communication situations often affects the immigrants' self-interest, and then my argument from Section 2 applies. Some unavoidable situations in which communication is necessary, however, involve interests of others that the immigrant has to take into account, which means that they involve duties toward others. When I accidentally barge into a stranger, I have a duty to apologize and explain that I did not intend to shove them, for which I need language skills. Or suppose I go for a walk in a deserted area and observe a car accident. In this situation, I have a duty to bring help by calling the ambulance and the police, which requires language skills. If I have witnessed a crime, I might have a (moral and legal) duty to testify in court, for which language skills will again be required, not for my own sake, but in order to fulfill duties toward others. If I have children at school, I might have a duty to speak with the teachers about their progress in classes, for which, once again, language skills are necessary.

Even in cases that mainly serve the immigrant's self-interest, duties toward others might be at stake. When I am at the doctor's and I am unable to speak the language, the doctor may have to invest much more time in an attempt to make communication possible than would be necessary if I spoke the language. I plausibly have a duty to facilitate the doctor's work as much as possible, which means that I should have language skills. More generally, it can be said that, in many situations that serve an immigrant's interest, he or she has “duties to cooperate” that presuppose language skills. Hence, even in the numerous situations that mainly concern the immigrant's self-interest and therefore, at first sight, do not involve duties toward others, a special class of duties—duties to cooperate—may be involved.

All inhabitants of a country will from time to time encounter situations in which they have some duty that requires language skills—either a duty of cooperation in situations that serve their own interest or some other kind of duty toward others. Since there is no way to avoid the possibility of ending up in such situations, everyone should be prepared to handle these situations. Immigrants should, therefore, make provisions to deal with these situations. They have a “second-order duty” to learn the language—a duty whose fulfillment enables them to fulfill other duties if they find themselves in communication situation involving duties.

Does this consideration imply that states have a right to oblige immigrants to learn the official language? Although it is an important political aim to ensure that as many people as possible are able to deal with communication situations involving duties toward others, that argument does not extend to justifying any legal obligations. To see this, it is important in a first step to notice that, to establish a legal obligation to integrate linguistically, we can only refer to communication situations that involve duties that might be enforced. States do not have a right to compel me to apologize when I barged into someone, or to impose a legal sanction on me if I do not apologize. Thus, states clearly do not have a right to force me to be prepared to apologize by learning the language. Similarly, since in liberal states parents are not legally obliged to speak with teachers, there cannot be a legal obligation on immigrants to be linguistically prepared for meetings with teachers.

Things are different in the examples of the testifying witness and the accident bystander. It is plausible to assume that states are entitled to compel people to testify in court, and to punish those who fail to call the ambulance when they have witnessed an accident. States might be entitled in principle to force people to be prepared for these situations by learning the language. However, as a second step of my argument, a legal obligation to be prepared for these situations would be disproportionate, either because there are less restrictive measures at hand to solve the communication problem or because the relevant situations are too unlikely to occur. In many examples, in particular in case of testimony for court, translators could solve the communication problem, so that any enforceable duty to learn the language would be an unnecessary interference in personal freedom. Other examples, such as that of the immigrant who must call an ambulance, are so unlikely to occur that any legal obligation to be prepared for that situation also seems disproportionate. One might object that in these cases there is an important good at stake—calling the ambulance might be lifesaving. However, as long as societies do not consider this to be a reason to obligate all citizens to acquire basic life support skills or always to carry a mobile phone to be prepared to call the ambulance, it is inappropriate to require immigrants to learn the language on these grounds.

To conclude, the unavoidability of duty-generating communication situations does not justify states in imposing legal obligations to learn the language, not to speak of obligations to integrate in any more substantial sense.

Another approach to justifying obligatory integration policies is based on the assumption that immigrants may acquire welfare entitlements that entail corresponding responsibilities. Societies with a welfare system provide support to those who are unable to care for themselves, in particular in case of unemployment. According to a “rights and responsibilities view” on welfare systems, the entitlement to receive support entails as its counterpart that everybody should do their best not to be in a position where they are in need of welfare assistance. In this view, not to do one's utmost to support oneself violates the rights of those who are financing the system through their work and taxes.

Such a “rights and responsibilities view” is probably the dominant normative approach to social justice within liberalism. In theory, those who are entitled to benefits may free themselves from their responsibilities by voluntarily declining to claim their entitlements. Since they will inevitably require sufficient food, clothing, and a place to live, however, this is usually not an option in practice. Hence, we can conclude that the existence of welfare systems imposes on all those who are unable to satisfy their basic needs an obligation to take measures to improve the chances that they will be able to do so in the future.

Based on this view, a case can be made that some immigrants can be obliged to attend language courses and to participate in further integration measures, such as application trainings for immigrants. If an immigrant is unemployed (or does not have sufficient work to earn their livelihood) it can be argued that learning the language will significantly increase their chances of finding a job (or a better job). Thus, immigrants might have a duty to integrate linguistically as a means of meeting their responsibilities as beneficiaries of a welfare system, and states have a right to enforce that duty by sanctions, because states have a right to minimize the costs generated by the welfare system. This is generally viewed as a justification for legal obligations: Just as in many liberal states job centers can require unemployed natives to take professional training and are allowed to sanction them if they refuse, the state might be justified in obliging unemployed immigrants to learn the language and in punishing them if they refuse.

The state's right to oblige immigrants to submit integration measures, insofar as it is based on the responsibility toward welfare systems, is limited in several respects. First of all, it is limited by the same considerations that count as limiting reasons for natives who are obliged to take professional training. For instance, the obligations of the unemployed must not be disproportionate and must avoid effects of social exclusion. Second, it applies only to a certain group of immigrants, namely the group of those who rely on social welfare due to unemployment or at least are seriously at risk of it. Third, states have that right only if the obligatory integration measures indeed increase the chances of finding a job¹⁸ and if there are no other comparably effective training options. In many cases, learning an international language or attending special professional training in the sector in which an immigrant had worked previously might be equally or even more important for finding a job. If there are several options, it should be left up to the immigrant to choose between them. At any rate, the argument as presented does not authorize the host society to dictate to immigrants which among a range of equally effective options for enhancing their employability they have to pursue.

Fourth, in the case of immigrants there is a particular limit that does not exist for natives: the state's right to oblige them to integrate depends on how long they will probably remain in the host country. If immigrants plan to stay only for a short period of time—such as refugees who intend to return to their country of origin as soon as circumstances permit—they do not have a duty to acquire skills that would be advantageous only in the long run. More importantly, most host states initially grant immigrants temporary resident permits. An immigrant who is only permitted to stay for, say, 2 years and whose prospects of being admitted for a longer period are uncertain, is certainly not morally obliged to invest several months to learn the language to be able to find a job (although she may well be obliged to accept a job offer on a low wage level, or to attend a brief application workshop). Hence, host societies are faced with a trade-off: either they grant immigrants a better prospect of staying, or they accept that unemployed immigrants do not have a duty to make significant efforts to improve their prospects on the labor market.

I would like to mention, finally, that the responsibility to avoid becoming dependent on the support of the social welfare system might be rejected as matter of principle. An increasing number of authors argue for an unconditioned basic income, hence they do not accept that states have a right to oblige people to try to find work. According to this view, in the context of a wealthy society with a significant rate of unemployment, it should be regarded as a free decision whether and to what extent someone wants to engage in finding a job. If these authors are right and everybody has a moral claim to an unconditioned basic income, or if a state has actually decided to implement a legal right to a basic income for everybody, the state's right to enforce immigrants to improve their prospects on the labor market disappears.¹⁹ For the purpose of the present investigation, however, I assume that, as long as Western societies consider it appropriate to compel their own members to improve their professional training, it is appropriate also to compel immigrants to do so.

Summing up, the responsibility to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system means that states have a right to compel a certain group of immigrants to join language courses or take further measures, such as application trainings, that improve their chances of finding a job. However, we are not justified in concluding that all unemployed immigrants may be so obliged. Whether they may, depends on their willingness and their legal permission to take up permanent residence and on the available options to adjust to the labor market. Within the argument presented, integration is seen only as an instrument to find a job, and therefore the content of the obligatory integration policies must be limited to what indeed serves the standing on the labor market. In particular, this probably rules out courses about the history and political system of the host society.

Finally, the justification of obligatory integration policies can appeal to a significant difference between immigrants and natives: whereas natives have always lived in their state, immigrants live in the host state due to a decision. Accordingly, it can be argued that immigrants might have an obligation to integrate because, when they immigrated, they accepted such an obligation. Put another way, immigrants may have concluded a contract with the host state that binds the permission to remain to some reciprocal performances on the part of the immigrant. Interestingly, in the philosophical literature on integration, these contracts play a marginal role,²⁰ whereas in real-life politics there are some important examples of framing immigration as a contract between host state and immigrant, such as the “Contrat d'intégration républicaine” in France and the “Integrationsvereinbarung” in Austria.

The underlying idea of the argument from the integration contract is that, if states have a moral right to permit or not to permit entry at their discretion, they are also at liberty to open their borders to immigrants under certain conditions. In particular, they may require those they admit to agree to an integration contract that includes the promise to engage in certain integration-promoting measures. That way, immigrants might have a duty to attend integration courses or other integration measures solely based on the promise they made when entering the country. Since most contractual obligations may be enforced, it is reasonable to assume that states have a right to subject the violation of the obligation to sanctions. Usually, the contract will serve one of the political aims I already mentioned above—it might aim to promote social cohesion or equality—whereby the fact that immigrants have agreed to the contract contributes what has been missing above, namely the justification for the state's right to compel immigrants to contribute to promoting the aim in question.

Several observations suggest that the scope of what the contract can include, as well as the groups of immigrants who might be required to agree to it, are limited. Note firstly that the argument from an integration contract is relevant only if states require immigrants to promise reciprocal performances that are not obligatory regardless of the contract.²¹ If the contract included, for instance, the promise of the immigrant not to violate the law,²² then the contract has a symbolic function: immigrants would have been obliged not to violate the law even if there had not been a contract. The same applies if a group of immigrants is already obliged to perform integration-promoting actions for some other reason, such as that otherwise they will be unlikely to be able to earn their livelihood after their arrival. In that case, a contract that involved a promise to perform these actions might serve to specify in detail what their obligations involve, but should not be seen as the basis of these obligations.

Thus, the integration contract is relevant here only if it goes beyond what justice requires in any case. At the other end of the spectrum, there are limits to what can legitimately be part of the contract (Lenard 2010, pp. 322–324). There are general limits to what contracts may include, and in the case that states conclude contracts, the limits are even more severe, given that states have to act in accordance with the core values of their constitutions. For example, states must not require immigrants to sign a contract that obliges them to convert to a certain religion or to submit themselves to the indoctrination of values—such a requirement would violate basic rights of immigrants.

As the idea underlying the argument implies, for the contract to be validly concluded, states must actually have a right to exercise discretionary control over immigration. If states owe admission to a particular person, they are not free to demand certain extra promises in return for granting admission over and above what an immigrant already owes to the host society for other reasons. Some groups of persons certainly have a moral right to enter. This is true, in particular, for most people who have a claim to enter to reunite families or as refugees.²³ In neither case are states justified in making the permission to stay contingent on reciprocal undertakings on the part of immigrants, but simply have to grant the justified claims of those who want to immigrate.

Consider, by way of analogy, a cargo ship. When the ship leaves a port, the crew is at liberty to offer free passage to someone who promises, in return, to play chess with the captain or to make music in the evening. The individual in question is free to accept the offer or not, and if she accepts it, she acquires a duty to do what she has promised. Now let us assume that the cargo ship encounters a shipwrecked person on the high seas. Obviously, the crew is not free to make the offer of a place on board conditional on this person promising to play chess with the captain. They are simply obliged to rescue this person by taking her on board, and if they compelled the shipwrecked person to make such a promise, they would not be justified in punishing her for failing to fulfill it.

An increasing number of philosophers doubt that states in general have a right to exercise discretionary control over immigration. These philosophers call for open borders and believe that everyone has a pro tanto moral right to immigrate to any state. If that is true, the argument from the integration contract comes under pressure. According to that position, everyone would have to be treated like the shipwrecked person in that they can claim their rights to enter without making any reciprocal undertaking. There might be ways to rescue the argument also for an open borders view. In particular, it could be argued that, since states that are attractive destinations for immigrants cannot admit all of those who wish to immigrate at once, states could be within their rights if they used integration contracts to prioritize certain immigrants, so that those potential immigrants who are willing to sign the contract would be admitted first.²⁴ I will not pursue the open borders issue further—for present purposes it is sufficient to observe that as long as the state's right to restrict immigration is acknowledged, obligatory integration policies could be justifiable based on an integration contract.

If we accept that a justification of legal obligations to integrate may be based on a contract, it is important to ask whether the contract has to be concluded explicitly, or whether implicit consent might be sufficient. Since currently only a handful of states implement formal integration contracts, this is decisive for establishing whether obligations only could be justified in principle through an integration contract, or whether existing policies should be regarded as being in fact justified by such contracts.

Kymlicka has prominently argued that by migrating, people implicitly give up their right to live within their own culture (Kymlicka, 1995, p. 96; see also Patten, 2014, ch. 8). Can we make a similar argument regarding integration, by claiming that, by the pure fact of immigrating, immigrants always implicitly promise to integrate substantially into the host society? I do not think so. Integration is not internally linked to migration in the same way as renouncing living within one's culture can plausibly be so linked: it is not contradictory to migrate without seeking substantial integration. However, if the existing immigration laws in a particular state require immigrants to attend integration courses or to engage in other integration-promoting activities, and the immigrants are informed about this in advance, it is reasonable to assume that they have agreed to an implicit integration contract.²⁵

Goppel (2019, p. 76) objects that, if tacit consent rendered predictable legal treatment legitimate, immigrants would also be bound to accept all unjust laws they knew of ex-ante, because immigration would count as giving tacit consent to these laws. This conclusion is, according to her, inacceptable. Indeed, a contract can render some policies just that would be unjust without the consensus of the affected. However, as I said, there are limits to what states can demand in the contract. States must certainly not demand immigrants to accept laws that violate fundamental moral principles. Accordingly, implicit consent binds immigrants to obligatory integration requirements only insofar as these requirements do not violate fundamental moral principles, but does not bind them to respect any unjust laws. As a result, Goppel's argument loses its force. Hence, although an explicit contract is preferable to an implicit one, there is no reason to reject the possibility that the contract might be concluded implicitly by immigrating and thereby being aware of the legal obligations immigrants are faced with in the state of destination.

To sum up, host states are justified in implementing obligatory integration requirements for those immigrants who have implicitly or explicitly agreed to an integration contract which includes these requirements, provided that the requirements do not violate the state's basic commitments and that the immigrant did not have an initial moral right to enter anyway.

Obligatory integration policies such as the requirement to attend an integration course or to settle in a certain area to facilitate integration are severe restrictions of human freedom and therefore are in need of normative justification. As justifying reasons, we should only accept reasons that are considered to be adequate justification of state intervention in comparable situations outside the area of integration, or we should give reasons why immigrants should be treated differently. The article examines what seem to be the six most promising arguments for justifying obligatory integration policies and concludes that only two of them are sufficient to justify legal obligations, but solely for particular groups of immigrants. First, under certain circumstances, immigrants who are not able to support themselves might be obliged to comply with integration requirements that promote their future ability to live independently of support from the welfare system. Second, potential immigrants who do not have a moral right to immigrate may be required to agree to an integration contract that obliges them to perform some integration-promoting actions. As far as no additional justifying arguments can be advanced, in all other cases, obligatory integration policies are unjust, independently of any positive effects these policies might have for immigrants or the host societies.

This conclusion certainly has direct implications for politics. To be sure, a detailed evaluation of the complex legal arrangements of Western states based on my conclusion would be an ambitious task of its own right. In any case, it is likely that current integration policies in most European states will, to a remarkable extent, turn out to be unjust. To eradicate that injustice, states could orient integration policy more toward promoting integration through positive incentives, instead of obligations to integrate, enforced with sanctions. If states are nevertheless willing to adhere to the idea of obligatory integration rules, they should seek a revised legislation that is more specifically directed at the groups of immigrants who may justifiably be obliged to engage in integration-promoting activities.