Integration practices as tools for democratic re-politicisation. Insights from “PISTE” (AMIF) project.

Since the decline of political mass parties and the growing challenges in representative democracies, the consequent structural decline in political participation across European democracies has been documented primarily through statistics on electoral turnout (salience) or metrics on membership in political parties or unions (actors’ expansion). The methods for measuring and understanding participation and politicisation remain tied to pre-established interpretative frameworks. The progressive de-politicisation of citizenship is reflected either as the absence of participatory acts (civic-political disaffection) or as a lack of politicisation effects, such as active engagement with contemporary political and social issues (desocialization or deviation of belonging). Attempts to re-politicise citizenship often rely on top-down approaches, such as educational policies designed to reclaim interest in civic-political duties or to revive engagement to national-constitutional values and stimulate civic-political awareness. While such methods may have some success, they can also provoke adverse reactions (e.g., ideological polarisation and the rise of nativism-populisms). This paper proposes a theoretical approach to addressing the politicisation crisis by highlighting informal and atypical "performances of citizenship" inspired by integration practices as actual politicisation methods. Drawing on findings from the PISTE (AMIF) project, the argument is that integration policies rooted in participatory practices—typically used for accommodating and including migrants into host societies—can provide valuable insights for designing inclusive and effective bottom-up re-politicisation methodologies. Integration is seen not merely as a path or prerequisite for subsequent politicisation but as an empirical politicisation method itself, capable of transforming issues into matters of public interest and political demand. Using cities as the unit scale of democratic membership, the interdisciplinary research examined civic-political participation patterns in four small or medium-sized towns in the EU documenting how non-citizens integrate at the local level. Policy assessments revealed that civic-political participation often takes atypical forms: 'horizontal' social activism, civic initiatives relevant to the general interest through local networks feature as politicisation and the creation of new forms of local belonging. The approach involves a combination of inclusive integration policies combined with political will from ‘above’, coupled with 'social networking' and grassroots initiatives from ‘below’ and mediation between these levels facilitated by ‘bridging figures’ who enable "acts of citizenship" (as conceptualised by Isin). Ultimately, varying levels of participation awareness (re)defined the meaning of participation and membership in political communities, demonstrating that citizenship exists independently of legal status. Instead, citizenship restored a quasi-Aristotelian form, as a lifelong, socially centered experience that unfolds over time and space through civic acts. This approach offers several advantages. It reconceptualises the democratic citizen, moving away from prefabricated patterns that define how the "good citizen" is expected to perform. Instead, it legitimises and activates a graduated, multilevel sense of belonging—local, national, and European—offering a potential pathway to restoring trust in politics. Moreover, social integration through participation fosters a culture of active citizenship, while challenging the notion of integration as merely a one-way process of adaptation. Finally, this framework establishes an empirical model of democratic citizenship that is adaptable to diverse local and national contexts.