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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon

Good Integration (GOODINT): Goals and bottlenecks of successful integration and social cohesion

Alternative title: God Integrasjon (GOODINT): Mål og hindringer for god integrasjon og sosial samhørighet

Awarded: NOK 13.7 mill.

What is good integration of migrants in Norway and Europe? How can we achieve it? GOODINT is a philosophical research project that examines these two questions. In particular, the project analyses the extent to which good integration is, or is not, dependent on realizing equality of opportunity, cultural integration, and social cohesion. The project focuses both on the generic cases of good integration, and on three European contexts: UK, Norway/Nordics, and Hungary. This ensures that the theoretical analyses are grounded in real world circumstances, and acknowledges that ‘good integration’ may mean very different things depending on the context in question. The second year of the project has continued to deepen our knowledge on the relevant preconditions and challenges of integration, different policy approaches, public opinions, and goals and bottlenecks of integration more generally. The findings so far have resulted in three monographs (all at OUP), and several academic articles in some of the leading international journals in the field (incl. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Moral Philosophy and Politics, Nations and Nationalism, and Western European Politics). Themes relating to good integration, nationalism and equality of opportunity have also been addressed in publications directed to broader academic, and non-academic, audiences, including e.g. three articles by the project members in the Springer Handbook of Equality of Opportunity. Our findings so far include e.g. both conceptual and normative analyses of the politics of social cohesion that show how the empirical literature on social cohesion is inconclusive with regard to the liberal nationalist arguments for restricting migration (Holtug 2021); How certain types of rhetoric on national identity, even when connected to e.g. pride in national institutions rather than cultural traditions or ethnicity, can be excluding and produce disproportionately negative effects to migrant minorities and other vulnerable groups (Gustavsson and Taghizadeh 2022); And how different types of exclusion, both from state territory and citizenship, require, yet are often lacking, justification, as the case may be, for example, with respect to the potential revocation of citizenship from suspected terrorists, or with respect to the requirements that may be put in place during citizenship ceremonies (Lenard 2023). The project members have also developed new ways to understand and justify democratic participation of refugees (Zsolt 2023); shown how the burden of sharing information in reconciliation processes constitutes an epistemic injustice (Reibold 2024); and how certain types of refugee policies (e.g. the Norwegian policy of giving priority to LGBTIQ+ refugees) can be justified both in the context international refugee agreements, and by resort to deeper moral principles (Vitikainen 2023). In May 2023, the project organized a three-day workshop on ‘Exclusion, integration, and democracy’ at UiT, with one of the workshop days being dedicated to discussing Patti Lenard’s new book on ‘Exclusion and Democracy’ (OUP 2023). A book symposium is currently in progress. In June 2023, the project had its main international conference on ‘Trust, Integration, and Social Cohesion’ at the Memorial University of Newfoundland (in collaboration with MUN, University of Brunswick, University of Ottawa, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada SSHRCC). The conference brought together leading scholars – theorists and empirical scientists – in the field, focusing especially on the challenges of building trust and social cohesion, both generally, and in the Northern/Arctic areas in particular. In addition to academic publications, the project has continued to engage with non-academic actors working with, and having personal experiences of, migrant integration. Both UiT and MUN events included discussion panels on Good Integration, and the panel discussions of the latter are currently being edited, and will be published for future use in due course. In Dec 2023, the project’s WP2, on Cultural Integration, hosted a workshop at Cambridge University, with a variety of contributions from academics, artists, and migrant-led organizations and support networks. The younger project members (2 post docs and 1 doctoral student) have made excellent progress in their individual sub-projects, and the individual project members continue to publish and make their work known in both international and local dissemination channels. Updated list of publications and project events can be found at: www.uit.no/research/goodint

GOODINT aims to provide a context sensitive theory of Good Integration, i.e., one which identifies criteria of goodness which are appropriate to the specific context in question as opposed to one that identifies criteria that, say, are not specific to the sort of groups the integration of which is in question. A context sensitive theory (as opposed to context-insensitive theory) is reflective of the particular context in terms of allowing it to specify the particular problem to be assessed, as well as in operating as an inherent element of its normative evaluation. GOODINT seeks to achieve this aim through a comparative approach to the integration goals and policies of three European countries: Norway, UK, and Hungary. These three countries have, both historically and at present, adopted somewhat different views on the central normative goals of integration and the means via which such goals are to be achieved. The different country contexts also provide different constraints through which the feasibility of the possible policies of integration are to be assessed, thus providing an ample starting point for GOODINT’s comparative approach. Such comparative approach, which is rather novel in political philosophy, provides a unique perspective for a normative analysis of different aspects of migration, diversity, and social cohesion, including the extent to which different country contexts affect our conceptual and normative frameworks of analysis of good integration. Furthermore, in contrast to many other accounts of good integration, GOODINT focuses on the ideals of equality of opportunity, and the ways in which such ideals, and the different understandings and commitments to such ideals, mould both our understandings of what Good Integration entails, as well as the means through which such integration is to be achieved.

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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon