Immigration and Society #: The Integration Nation

- Blurb -

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.