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The Anatomy of Civic Integration
Author(s) -
Kostakopoulou Dora
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the modern law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1468-2230
pISSN - 0026-7961
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2230.2010.00825.x
Subject(s) - citizenship , legislation , paternalism , social integration , software deployment , political science , politics , process (computing) , state (computer science) , sociology , political economy , public relations , law , law and economics , engineering , computer science , software engineering , operating system , algorithm
Recent legislation on migration and citizenship in Europe and the EU framework on integration require migrants to meet integration requirements in order to enter, reside, reunite with their families and naturalise in the host country. Mandatory language course attendance and examination tests are viewed as means of enhancing integration, which is now framed as a ‘two way’ process or a contractual agreement between migrants and the host society. Despite the deployment of the notion of a contract, integration is, in reality, a one way process aimed at procuring conformity, discipline and migration control. Civic integration rests on an artificial homogenisation and displays the same elements of paternalism and ethnocentricity that characterised past initiatives. The civic integration paradigm is a crucial feature of a renewed, albeit old‐fashioned, nationpolitics used by political elites to provide answers to a wide range of issues and to elicit support for a controlling state in the first decade of the 21 st century.