Civic Integration Policies in New Immigration Countries: The Case of Ireland

In the literature on civic integration policies, and especially in the literature which stresses the convergence of integration policies towards a “civic turn”, the focus is mainly on established immigration countries such as the Netherlands, the UK, France or Germany. It is, however, interesting to take a closer look at those countries, too, who, until recently, experienced more emigration than immigration, and hence are only just beginning to develop coherent integration policies. It is during the transformation of an emigration into an immigration country that policies develop need to be adapted to great social change and that we can therefore most clearly see where structural, institutional, power or ideational factors come to play in the policy-making process. Also, as change is taken place rapidly in the more recent European immigration countries and as these countries may refer to the “older” immigration countries as potential role models, the study of “new” immigration countries permits us to take a closer look at the ways how ideas about civic integration travel and are adapted to “national models” and local circumstances. Not only can this help to better understand actual integration policies, but also to further clarify concepts such as “convergence” or “national model”. The present paper further develops these questions and studies the case of Ireland. The empirical case study focuses on changes in selected Irish integration policies since the 1990s (when immigration for the first time exceeded emigration) as well as on the link between immigration and integration policies.