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

What is good integration of migrants in Norway and Europe? How can we achieve it? GOODINT is a 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 on three European contexts: the 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 third 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. We have continued to engage with questions about nationalism and social cohesion, and seen how even the thinnest conceptions of ‘civic nationalism’ can become excluding. This points, not only to a need for more inclusive notions of national identity, but also for the need to be more open to critique with respect to one’s national identity and institutions than is often the case. Good integration measures are often viewed as being good for the welfare of immigrants themselves, but, as we have shown, they also have an important function of preventing and counteracting anti-immigrant backlash and protecting democratic institutions. Some of the more country-focused parts of the project have looked at the effects of colonial legacies on trust between migrants and the native population in the UK and how the political rhetoric often portrays non-Western migrants as less trustworthy. Also in the context of the UK, the project has looked at religious schools and shown the permissibility, and potential value, of these schools, as long as certain side-constraints (e.g. measures to avoid segregation) apply; With respect to specific types of refugee integration, the project has highlighted some of the problematic effects of understanding refugee integration primarily in terms of economic integration, discussed normative bases for the democratic inclusion of refugees, and highlighted some of specifics involved in the integration processes of specifically vulnerable groups of refugees, such as LGBTIQ+. We have organized three project workshops during the present reporting period: Cambridge Dec 2023 (Cultural integration); Bergen March 2024 (LGBTQ+ refugeehood and migration); Oxford March 2024 (Trust and immigration). The results of the project have been published in academic journals and anthologies, and the collaboration projects based on some of the previous project workshops are starting to appear in print: a special issue on Migration and Discrimination at Ethics & Global Politics 17(2-3), and a book symposium on Nils Holtug’s The Politics of Social Cohesion, forthcoming at Ethics, Law and Politics. 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.