Integration: twelve propositions after Schinkel

Abstract

By way of a commentary on Willem Schinkel’s ‘Against “immigrant integration”: For an end to neocolonial knowledge production’ in this volume, I propose twelve propositions in order to rethink the academic use of the concept “integration” in contemporary migration studies. The notion of “immigration integration” is deeply embedded in a methodological nationalism found throughout mainstream research and policy making on “immigration” that reproduces a colonial, nation-state centred vision of society sustained by global inequalities. The article broadly shares Schinkel’s arguments, while suggesting specific operationalisations which could advance a more autonomous social scientific understanding of how the categorisation of international migration and mobilities is used by nation-states to sustain particular orders and hierarchies of social power.