Migrant Integration in a Changing Europe

Immigrants, European Citizens, and Co-ethnics in Italy and Spain

Roxana Barbulescu

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780268104375
• eBook ISBN: 9780268104405
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In this rich study, Roxana Barbulescu examines the transformation of state-led immigrant integration in two relatively new immigration countries in Western Europe: Italy and Spain. The book is comparative in approach and seeks to explain states' immigrant integration strategies across national, regional, and city-level decision and policy making. Barbulescu argues that states pursue no one-size-fits-all strategy for the integration of migrants, but rather simultaneously pursue multiple strategies that vary greatly for different groups. Two main integration strategies stand out. The first one targets non-European citizens and is assimilationist in character and based on interventionist principles according to which the government actively pursues the inclusion of migrants. The second strategy targets EU citizens and is a laissez-faire scenario where foreigners enjoy rights and live their entire lives in the host country without the state or the local authorities seeking their integration.

The empirical material in the book, dating from 1985 to 2015, includes systematic analyses of immigration laws, integration policies and guidelines, historical documents, original interviews with policy makers, and statistical analysis based on data from the European Labor Force Survey. While the book draws on evidence from Italy and Spain in an effort to bring these case studies to the core of fundamental debates on immigration and citizenship studies, its broader aim is to contribute to a better understanding of state interventionism in immigrant integration in contemporary Europe. The book will be a useful text for students and scholars of global immigration, integration, citizenship, European integration, and European society and culture.

CHAPTER 3

Varieties of Denizenship

Rights Regimes and the Importance of (Not) Being an EU Citizen

The unprecedented extension of rights to aliens during the postwar period has received much attention (see, e.g., Bauböck 1994, 2006, 2007a; Benhabib 2004, 2007; Bosniak 2000, 2006; Guiraudon 1997, 1998, 2002; Hammar 1990; Hollifield 1992; Jacobson 1996; Joppke 2001; Kriesi 2008; Somers 2008; Soysal 1994), but seldom has this attention focused explicitly on the connection between the rights immigrants have and the implications of those rights for integration (exceptions are Bauböck 1994; Groenendijk 2004; 2006; Hofinger 1997; Jesse 2011). But when the advancement of aliens’ rights is investigated scholars usually do not include all foreigners but rather separate the rights of those coming from outside the EU from those of intra-EU migrants.

This line of research is primarily concerned with the institution of EU citizenship. It either focuses on its role in the wider process of European integration (Bellamy 2008; Bellamy and Warleigh 2005; Meehan 1993; Vink 2005; Warleigh 2005; Wiener 1999) or examines the innovations and challenges that it brought to conventional theories of national citizenship (Bauböck 2007a, 2007b; Kostakopoulou 2001; Olsen 2008). The first disadvantage in splitting the two literatures is that it makes comparison between alien groups who live in the same place extremely difficult. The second disadvantage is that it leaves unexamined and unquestioned the state’s very different attribution of rights to different immigrant groups.

I place these two concerns at the center of this chapter and examine how state authorities, whether national, regional, or local, enfranchise immigrants by granting them rights in various spheres of public life. I systematically compare the rights of aliens and citizens and pay particular attention to the rights immigrants receive and in what areas they receive them (social rights, political rights, etc). Having completed this step, I then ask whether these rights are equally distributed among the four immigrant groups that I analyze. In this chapter I focus on the additional requirements that only non-nationals (i.e., EU citizens and third country nationals) have to meet in order to access rights. While the analysis addresses general requirements (e.g., meeting the income threshold for means-tested benefits), it concentrates on those citizens who do not need to satisfy them.

ALIENS’ RIGHTS AND IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION

One of the two tools that states have used for immigrant integration is the granting of rights to aliens. This approach defines integration as equal treatment of citizens and foreign residents and stresses the importance of the rights of immigrants to this process. Equal treatment is conventionally achieved by conferring rights on aliens that would allow them to participate in public life just as the local population does.

At first sight, this approach turns the puzzle of integration into a mere legal matter. However, there is more to it than that. States not only distribute rights, but they use the authority they have to (1) grant rights to or withhold them from aliens in particular sectors of public life; (2) grant rights to or withhold them from some aliens groups but not others; and (3) grant rights to aliens that are equal to those of citizens or reserve some rights for the sole enjoyment of citizens.

One might argue that states have lost some authority over aliens’ rights because they share jurisdiction with the EU. While with Europeanization member states have indeed lost some of their discretion on matters of immigration, I argue that they retain their state authority on aliens’ rights because they are sovereign, self-governing entities and because, directly or indirectly, states are the actual decision makers at the EU level.

Rights and integration are intimately linked in the lives of immigrants. The logic of putting rights and integration together is that if foreigners have rights equal to those of nationals and there is no discrimination against foreigners, then they should find it easier to integrate into the new society (Groenendijk 2004; Hofinger 1997; Jesse 2011).

The biggest advantage this approach offers is that it maps out what migrants can potentially do—that is, if migrants have unrestricted access to the labor market they can potentially get employment—and what they cannot do—that is, migrants cannot vote if they have no voting rights. The rights immigrants have are extremely important mainly because they structure integration, in the sense that they open or close windows of opportunity for participation (see Tarrow 1998). Rights per se certainly do not bring about “more” integration, but they put immigrants on a more equal standing with national citizens.

This legal conceptualization of integration as equal treatment should nevertheless not be misread as a claim about a direct correspondence between the number and kind of rights immigrants have and the actual level of integration. The limits of the rights immigrants have are certainly not the limits of their world. For instance, not having voting rights does not prevent migrants from getting involved in the political arena. In the same vein, the rights promised in the law do not always reach immigrants “unharmed” by state bureaucracy and by civil servants’ personal preferences and ideologies. Furthermore, Kraler, Kofman, Kohli, and Schmoll (2011) find that the rights migrants have interact with wider social processes such as social positioning, access to social capital or cultural capital such as being literate, speaking the language, and understanding the legal language that most policies use. Whether or not migrants finally exercise their rights depends to a great extent on their capacities. Morris (2002) notes that the social resources migrants have not only affect disproportionately the rights they have in practice but also produce civic stratification—a hierarchy of rights based on the status of the individual.

The rights-based approach to integration is not new. On the contrary, the models or typologies of immigrant integration have traditionally been grounded in the rights that migrants have, even if the rights considered in this early conceptualization were usually limited to cultural rights and access to citizenship. EU institutions too have repeatedly spoken about the virtues of the rights-based approach. At the Tampere Summit (1999), the European Council pointed out that “a vigorous integration policy should aim at rights and obligations comparable to those of the EU citizens.” A few years later, the European Commission urged that “the right to family reunification “is an indispensable instrument for integration” and that access to the labor market is “crucial for the integration of third country nationals into society” (European Commission (2003) 336, pp. 5, 19).¹

VARIETIES OF DENIZENSHIP

The most significant divergence in the types of rights people enjoy has its origin in the citizenship of the person: if she is a national citizen, then she enjoys a certain set of rights, but if she is an alien, then she enjoys a different set of rights.² These two separate sets of rights are not equal anywhere in the world; quite the contrary, in comparison to citizens, as Davy (2005, 133) puts it, “even the best status available to non-nationals is still different from the status of the nationals.”

Yet what is less recognized is that the rights immigrants have vary considerably, both when compared to nationals and among immigrants themselves. Generalizing from the American case, Schuck (1998), Cohen (1991), and Calavita (2005a, 2005b) suggest that what differentiates immigrants in terms of the rights they have is whether they are legal or illegal. In the same vein but in a European context, Morris (2002) and Joppke (2010) concur that different immigrants have different legal entitlements but argue that rights are only attached to migrants’ “entry” categories: high-skilled migrant, refugee, spouse, and so on. What these studies fail to observe is that within the EU, aliens’ national origin and broad citizenship group (i.e., EU or non-EU status) are equally important in determining the rights they have. This is not to say that all nationalities receive dissimilar treatments at all times as it is well known that this is prohibited by the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), as well as by European and domestic law (see Bell 2002); rather, certain rights pertain only to certain alien groups and not to others. Here, nationality is relevant because it gives a broader citizenship group access to a different type of rights.

Below I examine the rights attributed to the four groups of aliens across different sectors of public life, then compare the various types of denizenship in order to evaluate the degree of formal or legal integration. In the comparative discussion that follows, I look closely at labor market rights, social rights, political rights, rights to serve in the army, access to citizenship, and, finally, rights to protection against discrimination that foreigners enjoy. This list of rights is far from complete. Access to employment in the public sector for foreigners, the right to family reunion, the right to own newspapers and broadcasting companies, and access to permanent residence are just some of the other rights that could be included. The following discussion focuses on noncitizens’ rights, which fall within the competence of the national government but also include the rights granted by regional and local authorities. It mainly analyzes the rights granted by national authorities because the rights of noncitizens are the competence of the state and not of the regional or local authorities. However, there are some rights that are granted by subnational governments, such as access to public housing, which are not discussed in this chapter.

LABOR MARKET RIGHTS

Just as in all democracies with strong labor migration, aliens enjoy generous rights in Italy and Spain that are comparable to those of native workers (see Hollifield 1992). But these rights are conditioned on the preservation of their legal status as workers since it is only as workers that they may obtain a residence permit. This quality is no less relevant for EU citizens because even their residence permits depend on their work status or on sufficient economic means after the first three months in a host country. This worker requirement is really the Achilles’ heel of aliens’ rights in the two Southern European countries.

While both Italy and Spain have proved to be rather tolerant of illegal employment, securing formal employment has proved especially difficult for immigrants (see also Calavita 2005a). In Italy, for instance, once their work contract ends, migrants lose their legal status if they do not enter into a new contractual relationship within six months. Even if they return to the labor market it is probable that the new contract will be precarious and therefore cannot constitute a sufficient basis for the renewal of a work permit, which, in turn, is the basis for issuing a residence permit.

For all these reasons, it is easy to see that labor market rights are the gateway to a broader spectrum of rights. Only long-term third country nationals enjoy rights independently of their labor market participation. In Italy and Spain, as in all other EU countries, there are two main regimes: one for workers from the EU and one for workers from non-EU countries.

The EU Regime and Transitory Arrangements for EU Citizens from the New Member States

Freedom of movement of persons is one of the four fundamental freedoms of movement at the crux of the European Union project (art. 45, TFEU).³ Since it was introduced in 1968,⁴ freedom of movement has not applied to all persons but only to non-nationals who were nationals of other EU member states. From the beginning, free circulation in the EU allowed the targeting of EU workers who decided to move to another member state for work and left little room for measures that would prevent them from taking employment in a second EU country.

However, this changed dramatically with the Eastern enlargement when the old member states asked for protectionist measures to be put in place that restricted the entry of new EU citizens to their labor markets. The request was not new; the old member states enforced similar restrictions with the Southern enlargements of 1981 and 1985. In both cases transitional agreements were made to temporarily restrict the entry of these workers.

For the new Central and Eastern European states, a general closure of labor markets was negotiated that was limited to a maximum of seven years in the sequence 2+3+2.⁵ Restrictions applied to dependent employment and did not affect self-employment. In turn, older member states would then have full discretion to decide whether or not to enforce these restrictions. As a result, states could control the entry of new workers from these countries and protect their labor markets from unwanted pressure. The only exception concerned those new EU citizens already living in the old member states who could benefit from full access if they had been registered as legal workers for more than one year at the time their country joined the EU (Accession Treaty 2003, Annex IV; Accession Treaty 2005, Annex VI, par. 2-4, p. 321). This special arrangement was only introduced in the Accession Treaty of 2005 with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, and it was not included in the Accession Treaty of 2003. This additional provision was introduced for Romania and Bulgaria because many workers from these countries were already working in a number of member states. Upon accession, they would face new restrictions after having been through an immigration process the first time they undertook legal employment. However, Romanians and Bulgarians lost their full rights and unrestricted access to the labor market if they voluntarily left the member state where they worked or if they moved to another member state that enforced restrictions for these nationals.

As table 3.1 shows, a few countries—the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Sweden—opened their labor markets immediately after the first enlargement in 2004. Yet access to welfare systems was not free but linked to duration of residence in Ireland and the United Kingdom (see Ruhs 2006). With the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, the number of countries that opened their markets was larger but only because the other new member states that joined the EU in 2004 did not put restrictions on the number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers. The sole exception was Hungary, which, in the spirit of rivalry with its neighbor Romania and to the detriment of ethnic Hungarians of Romanian citizenship who traditionally sought work in Hungary, chose to impose the restrictions. However, of the old member states even fewer countries than those following the first Eastern enlargement gave full EU rights to Romanian and Bulgarian workers: namely, Finland and Sweden.

Two years after the accession, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, and Denmark opened their labor markets. This was subject to an expiration date, and in 2011 restrictions for all the countries that acceded in 2004 were permanently lifted, even in Germany and Austria, which were European hardliners in terms of enforcing transitional agreements. For Romanian and Bulgarian workers, nine of the twenty-seven member states extended the restrictions for the final two years envisaged in the Accession Treaty, that is, until December 2013 when the transitional period expired (see table 3.1). However, they had to justify continuing the restriction on the basis of “a serious disturbance to the labour market or a threat thereof.” Once the restrictions were removed they could not be reintroduced and no other limitations were allowed apart from an “exceptional situation” (Groenendijk et al. 2008, 73–78).

Regarding the restrictions, Spain and Italy took similar positions but only to a certain degree. Following the first enlargement in 2004, both countries chose to close their markets to nationals of the new member states but lifted the restrictions two years later after the first revision. Paradoxically, immediately after imposing restrictions, Italy issued a separate series of decrees and introduced a special quota for the new EU citizens within the quota system traditionally awarded to non-EU citizens. This quota was set at a particularly high number in comparison to the Italian quota: 36,000 positions for 2004, 79,500 for 2005, and finally, taking advantage of the final change to limit in some way the free circulation of EU workers, the government set the quota at no less than 170,000 positions in 2006. These are exceptionally high numbers if we consider that the total annual quota for non-EU workers was exactly 170,000. The quota for new EU citizens introduced under the second Berlusconi government privileges workers that are, as Giuseppe Sciortino (2009, 8) puts it, “‘European’ (as against North African) and ‘Christian’ (as against Muslim).” Despite these astronomical numbers, the decision of the Italian government to set a numerical limit on the freedom of movement of EU workers from the new member states is problematic, even if it was applied during the transitory regime.

Table 3.1. Transitional restrictions for the 2004 and 2007 enlargements for EU-27 ‘No’=free access, ‘yes’=restrictions, ‘yes (s)’=restrictions with simplifications

For the second enlargement, however, Spain and Italy again placed restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian workers immediately after the accession. After two years Spain lifted them while Italy decided to...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• ONE Migrant Integration and the State
• TWO Migration in Italy and Spain and Integration Outcomes
• THREE Varieties of Denizenship: Rights Regimes and the Importance of (Not) Being an EU Citizen
• FOUR Interventionist States and the Making of Integration Duties: When, How, and for Whom Do States Pursue Integration?
• Conclusion. The Freedom to not Integrate: Multicultural Integration amidst Rising Neoassimilation
• Appendix. Primary Sources
• Notes
• References
• Index