“No place. nowhere” for migrants’ subjectivity!?

Abstract

My engagement with the hot issue of “integration” is energized by a strong theoretical and political discontent accumulated over the years. For the dominant and widespread discourses about “integration” migrating subjects are viewed only as passive and as being driven-without subjectivity and without their own initiative in leading their life. A second argument points to a polarity in which the dominant view is capturing migrants. A polarity, which supplements the “abstraction” of migrants’ subjectivity, having them allegedly only assimilating to the circumstances, being confined in choosing to whom or to whose demands they finally have to conform to. These shortcomings have very practical consequences because they inversed actually the understanding of who is responsible, ready and/or able to integrate. Since “integration” is not just a “neutral” concept, but a particular tool or weapon in the ongoing social struggles, articulating or reflecting a certain social standpoint, the chapter thinks also about consequences for a critical (social) science in order to formulate alternative notions and procedures, where everyone’s subjectivity is embraced.