Europeanization of Immigrant Integration Policy?: A Case of Civic Integration

Abstract

In a prolonged economic crisis, failure of multiculturalism has been repeatedly argued in Europe, and this perception of failure has been reinforced by the intermittent upsurge of international terrorism during the past decade. In this context, the emergence of civic integration policy has been often argued as a proof of European retreats from multiculturalism. This “civic integration” which requires immigrants to integrate into host society spread rapidly across European countries as a new policy model, and was also exported to the EU by several Member States. This “Europeanization” of civic integration has often interpreted and criticized as a typical example of “uploading” effort of control-minded national governments to legitimize their restrictive domestic policies.

In this article, I intend to modify this intergovernmental interpretation on the diffusion of the civic integration model by conducting two sets of case analyses in two different levels. Firstly, in domestic level, political processes on the adoption of civic integration in the Netherlands and those in Germany will be comparatively analysed. Compared to the Dutch case where a rise of far-right party and a politicization of immigrant issues at the beginning of 2000s pushed a deep transformation of immigrant integration politics and policy, an introduction of German civic integration was led by left wing Red-Green government without strong influence of far right party. This article argues that the difference in party politics constellation between two countries generated a subtle divergence in nature of their civic integration, from liberal to restrictive.

Secondly, in European level, this article assesses how European institutions have reacted to the insertion of civic integration into the EU. Despite the EU’s lack of strong formal competence, the European Commission and the CJEU has gradually limited discretions of Member States to take restrictive measures in immigrant integration policy. On the one hand, the CJEU has reduced national margin of discretions by issuing a series of judgements. On the other hand, the European Commission has invited national governments not to take excessively restrictive measures by actively exploiting the court’s Jurisprudence. As a result, the European institutions have gradually defined a possible range of civic integration by cutting down room for restrictive policy.

From those two observations, this article argues a limitation of intergovernmental understanding on the European convergence towards civic integration policy.