The notion of 'immigrant integration' is used everywhere - by
politicians, policy makers, journalists and researchers - as an
all-encompassing framework for rebuilding 'unity from diversity' after
large-scale immigration. Promising a progressive middle way between
backward-looking ideas of assimilation and the alleged fragmentation of
multiculturalism, 'integration' has become the default concept for
states scrambling to deal with global refugee management and the
persistence of racial disadvantage.
Yet 'integration' is the continuance of a long-standing colonial
development paradigm. It is how majority-white liberal democracies
absorb and benefit from mass migration while maintaining a hierarchy of
race and nationality - and the global inequalities it sustains.
Immigrant integration sits at the heart of the neo-liberal racial
capitalism of recent decades, in which tight control of nation-building
and bordering selectively enables some citizens to enjoy the mobilities
of a globally integrating world, as other populations are left behind
and locked out.
Subjecting research and policy on immigrant integration to theoretical
scrutiny, The Integration Nation offers a fundamental rethink of a
core concept in migration, ethnic and racial studies in the light of the
challenge posed by decolonial theory and movements.