Mainstreaming Integration Governance

This book provides a critical analysis of mainstreaming as one of the major contemporary trends in immigrant integration governance in Europe. Bringing together unique empirical material and theoretical insights on mainstreaming, it examines how, why and to what effect immigrant integration is mainstreamed. Bringing together literature on gender and disability-mainstreaming, migration and policy literature, this chapter defines immigrant integration governance mainstreaming as the generic and inclusive adoption of immigrant integration priorities in generic policy domains, and decentralization and deconcentration of the coordination of integration policy responsibilities. This definition is leading in the analyses throughout the book.

This chapter analyses the mainstreaming of immigrant integration governance against the background of severe demographic, political and policy changes in immigrant integration policies in France, the UK and the Netherlands. Departing from early integration policies in the 1980s the approaches to immigrant integration have changed drastically over the last decades. Successive waves of immigration led to a diverse build-up of both the migrant population as well as the society as a whole. In the policy and political domain, a strong backlash against multiculturalism and assimilationist turn manifested itself in the early 2000s. This chapter addresses how these new objectives or policy frames change the philosophies of integration in the ‘old countries of immigration’, replacing the last evolution in the context of fast changing paradigms and addressing the specific issue of the categorization of the recipients of integration and antidiscrimination policies.

This chapter analyses the mainstreaming of immigrant integration governance in Spain and Poland. The relatively new trends of migration in these countries provide a relevant testing ground for the theory of mainstreaming. We analyse how mainstreaming has occurred, what the mechanisms behind this process are, and who is the main social and political actor in the process of (non-)mainstreaming. Our results suggest that the economic crisis has led to the phenomenon we call ‘mainstreaming by accident’. In both cases, welfare states have neglected immigrant-oriented social policies because of economic cuts, resulting in a gap in the coverage of the needs of immigrants in Spain and Poland. The actor who has taken responsibility for the immigrants are the NGOs whose capacity to intervene is limited.

The local level has become increasingly central to the development of immigrant integration policies, due to both the increasingly diverse nature of cities and a general move towards polycentric integration governance models. As large cities are often the main recipients of immigrants, an increasing number of European cities can be described in terms of superdiversity, characterised by a proliferation of differences and without straightforward us-them distinctions. This chapter explores how generic policies are adapted to prevalent forms of diversity at the local level, and it analyses the increasing significance of frontline pragmatism in neighbourhood areas where ‘diversity is mainstream’. The question whether mainstreaming is a response to superdiversity becomes complicated by austerity measures at the national level.

This chapter explores attempts to mainstream immigrant integration policies at the European Union (EU) level. While the EU has limited competence to influence integration policy in Member States, it can promote mainstreaming through funding, guidance and legislation. These attempts have thus far had limited impact. Having previously made a formal commitment to mainstream integration policies, the European Commission has only recently started to improve coordination across its directorate generals. The chapter also reflects on the impact of the recent refugee crisis. Although the crisis initially diverted political attention from the issue of integration, the longer term implications of the recent arrivals have increased the urgency within the European Commission to develop a more coordinated, mainstreamed approach.

This chapter will zoom in on ‘how’ and ‘why’ immigrant integration policies are mainstreamed across France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, the UK and at the EU level. Highlighting the rationale behind mainstreaming, and the factors that promote or rather inhibit governments to mainstream integration governance. This chapter shows that despite the broad and open framing of mainstreaming efforts the development of mainstreaming often turns out to be driven by politicization and retrenchment rather than efforts to adopt policies to a superdiverse setting. This applies particularly to mainstreaming efforts at the national level.

This chapter focuses on the practice of mainstreaming, more specifically on the implementation of mainstreaming at the street level. The chapter shows that on the one hand mainstreaming helps street-level bureaucrats to make use of their policy discretion to address the complexity of the situation that immigrants face. On the other hand, the broad mainstreamed policy frame can also lead to airbrushing or ‘denial’ of diversity issues and challenges, both at the level of policy making and policy implementation. While the implementation of mainstreaming at the street level can turn out more inclusive due to the custom work street-level bureaucrats deliver, without political leadership and support for a more inclusive mainstreaming approach, the priorities and expertise at the street-level are prone to a risk of dilution.

This chapter questions to what extent the equality policy approach of gender mainstreaming is deceiving because it does not deliver on formerly made promises. It puts forward the argument that the lack of result lies in an overrated expectation of social change underlying the policy approach. This, in combination with the prevailing understanding of not only gender equality but also gender, leads to high expectations difficult to satisfy.

This chapter focuses on interculturalism as an emerging policy paradigm for diversity management. I concentrate my core contribution in arguing that in migration-related diversity management, we are in the process of a policy paradigm change, going from a multicultural to an intercultural policy paradigm, and that mainstreaming is a core driver of this process. Given this key argument, I will also defend that mainstream interculturalism is a more appropriate framework for dealing with the complexity of current super-diverse societies and transnational mind. I will conclude that one of the advantages mainstream interculturalism in need of further research is that it can be argued that it seems to contribute to xenophobia reduction, namely reducing ethno-national narratives, racism, prejudice, false stereotypes and negative public opinions, which restrict contact between people from different backgrounds.

The emergent literature on mainstreaming immigrant integration frequently references the term ‘superdiversity’. The diversification of migration is put forward as one rationale for implementing measures to support immigrant integration across policy fields and across levels of policy making. In this chapter and against the backdrop of the book’s empirical work, I ask how else, beyond being a rationale for mainstreaming, thinking about superdiversity might add to debates about what is mainstreamed. I primarily advance the argument that a superdiversity lens is uniquely placed to critically examine whether the goal of mainstreaming should be integration and propose to consider the merits of thinking about convivial disintegration as a more adequate policy goal.

By bringing together unique empirical research on mainstreaming in the UK, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Poland and the EU, and theoretical reflections from various perspectives on the notion of mainstreaming, including gender and disability mainstreaming, migration- and policy literature, this book aims to contribute to the empirical and theoretical understanding of mainstreaming. In the conclusions to this book we reflect on some of the main empirical findings, such as the notion of incomplete mainstreaming, the differences between mainstreaming on the local and national level and the use of proxy policies. Bringing these findings together we reflect on the expectations that were formulated at the beginning of this book on inter alia mainstreaming in a superdiverse context and mainstreaming’s answer to the dilemma of recognition.

Can the idea of mainstreaming help resolve implementation problems and achieve integration goals? Can successful mainstreaming resolve the conundrum that population-naming categories created for social justice purposes in the end undermine those very purposes? This afterword first reflects on the metaphoric character of ‘mainstreaming’, which shifts the focus from ‘bad policy implementation’ to the problematic framing of the issue to begin with, requiring a conceptual stretching that undercuts the good conceptual work it promises. The discussion then turns to one of the central features of evaluating integration policies: the need for categories, and the conundrum entailed in using categories to achieve social justice goals which, in the end, undermine those very purposes.