Revising the Integration-Citizenship Nexus in Europe. Sites, Policies, and Bureaucracies of Belonging

Abstract

Does the acquisition of nationality promote integration (understood as social, cultural, economic, and political incorporation) or is it the other way around? What role do bureaucrats play in determining who accesses the process of naturalisation across European countries? If citizenship through integration is meant to solve the problem of immigrant belonging and membership in a society, how do we evaluate its performance across levels of government, from local to supranational? How does integration take place outside of national citizenship—either above (with EU citizenship) or below (at the regional or municipal level)? How and to what extent do regional governments move these processes of citizenship acquisition away from national qua nation state policies and rhetoric? Beyond official jurisdictions and different government levels, how do interactions in public spaces, and “lived citizenship” matter for integration and the construction of citizenship beyond formal membership? The researchers gathered in this seminar will interrogate the citizenship-integration nexus by scrutinizing demands placed on migrants about their integration before, below, and beyond national citizenship.