Rethinking settlement and integration

Migrants' anchoring in an age of insecurity

Aleksandra Grzymala-Kazlowska

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781526136831
• eBook ISBN: 9781526136855
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

Rethinking settlement and integration argues that concepts well-established in migration studies such as 'settlement' and 'integration' do not sufficiently capture the features of adaptation and settling of contemporary migrants. Instead, Grzymala-Kazlowska proposes the integrative and transdisciplinary concept of 'anchoring', linking the notions of identity, adaptation and settling while underlining migrants' efforts at recovering their feeling of security and stability. Drawing on in-depth interviews and questionnaires with Polish migrants in the United Kingdom and Ukrainian migrants in Poland, ethnographic and autobiographical research as well as the analysis of texts from internet forums and blogs, this monograph demonstrates the applications of the author's original concept of 'anchoring', and its foregrounding of the combination of sociological and psychological perspectives. Rethinking settlement and integration aims not only to examine the processes of adaptation and settling among today's migrants, but highlights practical implications to better support individuals facing changes and challenges in new, complex and fluid societies.

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Rethinking settlement and integration: a critical and integrative literature review

The concept of integration, predominantly understood as migrants’ participation in the life of the receiving society, stimulated by special policies, remains a central category in migration studies in Europe. I have argued that, in spite of its prominence, integration is a highly problematic concept with substantial limitations (see, for example, Grzymala-Kazlowska 2008a, 2013a; Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 2018). Its drawback is linked to its politicisation as well as its structural and functionalist provenance (Favell 2001; Spencer and Cooper 2006). As Baubock (1994) indicates, integration is an elusive concept which may refer to the internal cohesion of a system or aggregate composed of a multitude of units or elements; it can designate the entry into the system of elements which had been parts of the environment before; or it may mean the extension of the system to incorporate new elements or units in a way which contributes to the self-sustaining operations of the enlarged system. The concept of integration not only constructs groups or individuals vis-à-vis receiving societies portrayed as internally coherent and unified, but also implies the progression of integration over time (or failure to progress), non-reversible or linear and invariable processes, and focuses on some aspects such as social ties, cultural competencies or relations with institutions while overlooking others, such as the issues of individuals’ feelings of stability, security or identity.

Leaving aside this vagueness and ambiguity, ‘integration’ has become a popular and handy term denoting a broad sphere of problems related to the presence of the others. In general, analyses of integration have concentrated on policy development and narrow empirical research into specific challenges, determinants and outcomes of integration. This, combined with the prevailing focus on practical and normative aspects of integration, has led to its ‘under-theorisation’ and limited (also academic) scrutiny.

The notion of integration has been largely determined by a political debate over the existence of migrants in Europe and their inclusion in host societies in a way that maintains the socio-cultural order. Favell (2016: 5) points out that, although less nationalistic than ‘assimilation models (which are simply blind to their patently methodological nationalist assumptions about the bounding unit of “society” providing the aggregate norms), “integration” in Europe is fairly explicitly an exercise in self-conscious top-down nation-building’. The assimilationist perspective, fitting better in the experience of the US and older post-colonial migrant populations, is less adequate for capturing the complex differentiations involved in the diversity of recent ‘new’ migrations within and to Europe (Favell 2016).

Nevertheless, as Favell (2013) notes, nation-building processes in Europe are still based on the nineteenth-century approach which imposes unified ideas of national ‘culture’ and conditions of citizenship, particularly on the most vulnerable, whereas in reality European societies should be rather seen as increasingly fragmented, un-Durkheimian porous and multi-levelled, with individuals who, to a varied degree, are flexible and mobile, and who are agents making choices about their rights and benefits, duties and obligations. In spite of this complexity and changeability, up till now the relations between migrants, their descendants, native populations and the state have been predominantly depicted in terms of oversimplified binary oppositions – minority/majority, them/us and dominant/non-dominant – as can also be seen in the Casey Review (Casey 2016), which stressed the need for migrants to integrate into what is believed to be a culturally and socially coherent society. As the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration (Bell et al. 2017) noted, a fundamental reframing of the national debate on immigration in the UK in terms of both policy and rhetorical shift is needed in order to deconstruct migrants as a security risk or the ‘other’ and present them rather as Britons-in-waiting. Instead, as Heath and Richards (2016) point out, in many European countries citizens consider immigration to be one of the most pressing challenges to be dealt with, which helps conservative and right-wing political parties opposing immigration to gain wide support.

In spite of the return to traditionalist sentiments and conservative resurgence, receiving countries need to be rather reconceptualised as societies undergoing processes of growing fragmentation, complexity and transformations (Fenger and Bekkers 2012; Luhmann 2006), characterised by their fluidity and diversity, globally interconnected (Cohen and Kennedy 2013) and transnationally linked within dispersed networks of individuals and families (Glick Schiller 2003). The structural and functional integration of contemporary societies may be questioned. Instead of being seen as fixed and separate entities with coherent socio-cultural systems, as is often assumed in the integrationist perspective, today's societies can be imagined as consisting of networks (Castells 1996) and flows and mobilities (Urry 2000). Faced with the gradual fragmentation and dilution of the nation-states by political and economic processes, both external and internal, top-down and bottom-up, the previously prevailing ‘nation-state–society’ paradigm (Favell 2010) and the nation-state centred methodology named ‘methodological nationalism’, which takes states for granted as the natural units of analysis in migration research (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), need to be rethought. The above-mentioned processes can be linked to transnational and global cultural flows reinforced by the media and the advancement of new communication and transport technologies (Appadurai 1996), with the latter allowing for the rise in everyday practices and social relations which span national borders and increase interconnectedness between societies (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). This coexists not only with growing diversities and societal transformation regarding such institutions as family (Popenoe 1993) or institutional religion (Dobbelaere 1999) but also with growing inequalities and new types of divisions, conflicts and anti-systemic movements (Giddens 2006).

As a result, the adequacy of the concept of integration needs to be reconsidered, especially in the context of growing fluidity and diversity. The changes described encourage the reconceptualisation of the issue of integration, from the inclusion of different elements (migrants) into ‘a whole’ to the wider problem of cohesion in complex contemporary societies. However, according to Kearns and Forrest (2000), social cohesion is yet another vague concept which carries different meanings related to: 1) common values and civic culture, 2) social order and social control, 3) social solidarity and wealth disparities, 4) social networks and social capital, and 5) identity/place attachment. Although social cohesion redirects attention from the ‘other’ to society in its diversity, it may still be seen as relying on similar normative and political assumptions as integration, including the fact that it may be perceived as a hollow concept used in policy debates on social inclusion within complex and diverse societies. Lewis and Neal (2005: 437) highlight the hidden, coercive features of social cohesion: ‘What has been particularly apparent has been a partial shift away [from the beginning of this millennium] from affirmations of British multiculture towards a (re)embracing of older notions of assimilationism within a newer, de-racialised, language of social cohesion.’

An alternative approach may be provided by the concept of superdiversity, aiming to capture the unprecedented ‘diversification of diversity’, which in some places represents a socio-cultural and demographic complexity beyond anything previously experienced (Vertovec 2007). Grillo (2015) proposes considering the multidimensionality of superdiversity as occurring along a number of different axes including: ethnicity, socio-legal and political status, socio-cultural diversity (distinct from ethnicity and relating to, for example, language and religion) and economic and life opportunities. Superdiversity may not only be understood as a descriptive term capturing a changing demographic and socio-cultural reality. It can also be viewed as a wider analytical perspective highlighting contemporary complexity, sensitising to issues of difference and equality (Vertovec 2011), helping to overcome binary categorisation and a ‘groupism’ that is the oversimplified perception of society through the lens that sees groups as internally homogeneous and externally bounded (Brubaker 2006), and offering a new narrative which could replace the contested notion of multiculturalism (Vertovec 2007). Superdiversity can also have crucial implications for social policy (Vertovec 2010a).

However, in spite of its stimulating value, superdiversity is not a broadly accepted concept and provokes various criticisms. Its vagueness, novelty (Blommaert 2013) and descriptiveness (Arnaut and Spotti 2014) are raised as well as its overemphasis on cultural and localised difference at the expense of structural inequalities, social conflicts and divisions, still existing racism and discrimination (Sepulveda et al. 2011). Hall (2017) urges that the notion of superdiversity should be more explicitly linked (‘moored’) to the structures and processes of power and inequality, whereas Back (2015) notes that the promotion of superdiversity may contribute to social anxieties and tensions.

The concept of integration might be also challenged f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Rethinking settlement and integration: a critical and integrative literature review
• 2 Developing the concept of anchoring: from a metaphor through a sensitising concept to an empirically grounded concept
• 3 Researching migrants’ anchoring
• 4 From mobility to anchoring: Ukrainian migrants in Poland
• 5 Anchored not rooted: Polish migrants in the UK
• 6 Towards a general model of migrants’ anchoring
• 7 Insecurities, constraints and inequalities in anchoring
• Conclusions: from theory to practical applications?
• Appendix: characteristics of interviewees
• References
• Index