The Contested Concept of ‘Integration’

Abstract

A fundamental problem in the study of ‘integration’ has been a failure to separate the empirical is from the normative ought: that is, to study what is happening in society separately from implicit assumptions on a desired end-goal. A crucial question, Castles et al. (2014, p. 264) write, concerns how immigrants and their descendants “can become part of receiving societies and nations”. This process, they note, is most commonly referred to as integration, “but this can imply a specific idea of where the process should lead, so we prefer the more neutral term ‘incorporation’”.