Is it Really about Values? Civic Nationalism and Immigrant Integration

Immigrant integration is one of the most pressing policy concerns of the early twenty-first century, and the perception that newcomers are not integrating into their receiving societies has led to a growing backlash against immigration. One of the outcomes of this backlash has been a push for ‘civic integration’, according to which the most important mechanisms of integration are language training, employment counselling, and especially the inculcation of respect for the principles of liberty, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Most analyses of civic integration focus on whether its spread means the end of distinct ‘national models’ of citizenship, and its consistency with liberal principles and laws. Few authors, however, have directly addressed the fact that civic integration is essentially civic nationalist ideology applied to migrants. Indeed, the controversy over civic integration is not new, but is instead the most recent chapter in a long-standing debate centred in nationalism studies, which focused on intra-state nationalist conflict during the 1990s. Accordingly, in this paper I will examine whether civic integration, as an expression of civic nationalism, reflects the self-understanding of majority groups more than the real bases of social cohesion, and the effect this has on its feasibility as a policy prescription. Based on the available evidence, civic integration seems best understood as a kind of symbolic politics that is more ‘immigration policy’ (who gets in) than ‘immigrant policy’ (how they are integrated). Furthermore, while most of the principles associated with it are indeed important for participation in a liberal–democracy, ‘shared values’ are likely a product of integration, not a mechanism for its achievement. This paper will also argue that researchers and policy-makers may be better served by an alternative conception of integration that begins with networks of social ties, as suggested by recent advances in relational sociology.