The Integration Nation: Immigration and Colonial Power in Liberal Democracies (Immigration and Society)

The notion of ‘immigrant integration’ is used everywhere – by politicians, policy makers, journalists and researchers – as an all-encompassing framework for rebuilding ‘unity from diversity’ after large-scale immigration. Promising a progressive middle way between backward-looking ideas of assimilation and the alleged fragmentation of multiculturalism, ‘integration’ has become the default concept for states scrambling to deal with global refugee management and the persistence of racial disadvantage. Yet ‘integration’ is the continuance of a long-standing colonial development paradigm. It is how majority-white liberal democracies absorb and benefit from mass migration while maintaining a hierarchy of race and nationality – and the global inequalities it sustains. Immigrant integration sits at the heart of the neo-liberal racial capitalism of recent decades, in which tight control of nation-building and bordering selectively enables some citizens to enjoy the mobilities of a globally integrating world, as other populations are left behind and locked out. Subjecting research and policy on immigrant integration to theoretical scrutiny, __The Integration Nation__ offers a fundamental rethink of a core concept in migration, ethnic and racial studies in the light of the challenge posed by decolonial theory and movements. "The notion of 'immigrant integration' is used everywhere - by politicians, policy makers, journalists and researchers - as an all-encompassing framework for rebuilding 'unity from diversity' after large-scale immigration. Promising a progressive middle way between backward-looking ideas of assimilation and the alleged fragmentation of multiculturalism, 'integration' has become the default concept for states scrambling to deal with global refugee management and the persistence of racial disadvantage. Yet 'integration' is the continuance of a long-standing colonial development paradigm. It is how majority-white liberal democracies absorb and benefit from mass migration while maintaining a hierarchy of race and nationality - and the global inequalities it sustains. Immigrant integration sits at the heart of the neo-liberal racial capitalism of recent decades, in which tight control of nation-building and bordering selectively enables some citizens to enjoy the mobilities of a globally integrating world, as other populations are left behind and locked out. Subjecting research and policy on immigrant integration to theoretical scrutiny, The Integration Nation offers a fundamental rethink of a core concept in migration, ethnic and racial studies in the light of the challenge posed by decolonial theory and movements." -- Publisher's website Cover 1 Title page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Thanks and Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 Integration as a Paradigm 18 Integration research as ‘normal science’ 19 Towards a new political demography 24 Integration and citizenship 31 Mobilities and diversity 35 Integration and Assimilation 44 Assimilation in US immigration research 46 Integration or assimilation? 51 The modernist development paradigm 59 Immigration/integration nations in the transatlantic imperium 65 Integration and Multiculturalism 71 Integration as the middle way 74 The republican philosophy of integration 80 Models of integration 84 Muscular liberalism and after 91 Integration and Race 100 Integration and desegregation 102 Technologies of integration 109 Integration as the production of race/ethnicity 112 The black box of whiteness 122 Integration and Transnationalism 133 Transnationalism and integration 136 Migration and development 148 Bordering 154 Citizenship, the birthright lottery and global inequalities 164 Integration and Decolonization 170 Coloniality and decolonization 172 Open borders: towards de-nationalization and decolonization? 174 Urban and local de-nationalization 184 Global and planetary integration: COVID-19 and after 191 References 196 Index 223 EULA 238