International Migration and Migrant Integration (SO468)
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Lecture Notes & Coursework
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Course
International Migration and Migrant Integration (SO468)
Institution
London School Of Economics (LSE)
Complete Coursework and Lecture Note documentation for the LSE core module SO468: International Migration and Migrant Integration. Includes a distinction-level formative essay about religion and immigrant integration, and the preparatory notes. Also includes lecture notes for the full course, along...
International Migration and Migrant Integration (SO468)
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15/01/2023
Lecture 1: SO468 International Migration: Migrant Integration
Themes : Social Integration
Classical origins :
- Emile Durkheim, “founding father” of sociology
Functions
- Creates social duties which connect individual to society
o Promotes bonds between individuals and institutions
Role as a parent, daughter, church volunteer, etc
- Social identity
o Gives a sense of meaning and purpose to life
Catholic, Muslim, trade unionist, etc
- Restricts excessive individualism
o By imposing duties, obligations, norms, values
‘Feckless fathers’; ‘two timing’, etc
Social Integration
- Shifts focus from individual to social relationships
o Society is more than a collection of individuals
Focus on family environment
Patterns of family organisation, something he skipped
o Assumption that it’s not hostile
Migrant integration
- Assimilation and integration
Straight line assimilation:
- Idea that each generation represents on average a new stage of adjustment to host society –
a further step away from the ethnic group, and a step closer to complete assimilation
- Lots of elements behind this are contested
Social conflict: settler society vs new destinations
The politics of border control
- Solve ‘community relations problems’ by restricting immigration
Rise of far right anti-immigrant political parties
- In all major European democracies
Hostile public opinion
- Hostility in the sphere of integration
o Wanting migrants to be ‘more like us’
o Fear: loss of national community (identity)
o Competition for ‘our’ resources – jobs, housing, healthcare
, o What if they don’t follow our laws ? Sharia law etc
Social conflict
Public audience Academic Audience
Policy sociology: Critical sociology:
- Social problems (no social harm) - Explaining social phenomena ultimately
- Knowledge to solve, help or understand subordinate to normative position
specific problem - Rejects notion of ‘value free’ science
- Descriptive; extent and scale - Gives voice to marginalised
- Policy relevance - Emancipatory project
Expressive Social scientific
- Focus on shared human concerns - Puzzles/empirical patterns
- Captures ‘zeitgeist’ or ‘lived experience’ - Development of theory & method
- Tries to relate to personal experience - Independent verification; logic
- Seeks an emotional response - Causal explanations
Integration is a disreputable term
- Schinkel (2017) society is “not an entity that exists independently of its imagination”
o Policy debates misguided by nationalist images of the Netherlands
- Individual doing well but group less so
o The individual immigrant still has a problem due to their identity !
- Immigrants have to do the work of integration
o Equal scores on education and labour market attainment etc
- But non-immigrants are part of the problem
o Especially when it comes to racism
- Question of model minorities
Course Outline (See Moodle surely)
Seminar Prep:
Boudon, Raymond (2001), ‘Sociology that Really Matters’, European Sociological Review, vol. 18, no.
3, pp. 371-378.
- Cameral/informative sociology; critical or committed sociology; expressive sociology;
cognitive type (p. 371)
- Question as to whether sociology is science – and whether it might be better served if it did
not try to be a science at all
- Lepenies: sociology oscillates between science and technology but belongs to neither;
Classical sociologists like Durkheim and Weber regarded sociology as a science but their
works displayed many aesthetic and ideological features; sects of sociology evoke world of
art rather than science
- Weber wrote awkwardly on purpose to not influence his readers with style (p. 372)
- Tocqueville is harsh on those who believe a theory must be true because it generates
positive feelings
- Durkheim accused of being ideological – claim that he produced theories on many subjects
that are genuinely scientific
, - Growing influence of media increased demand for expressive sociology: lack of religion,
literature, or philosophy to explain for moral and physical afflictions, instead looks to
psychoanalysis and sociology (p. 376)
- Genres distinguished are ideal types and borderlines between them are quite fuzzy; hard to
define fully.
- Expressive sociology useful when it confirms the weight of social structures evoked by
Homans. (p. 377)
- Success of modern sociologists inclined towards structuralism attributed to their
characterisation of individual autonomy as an illusion
- Methodological individualism (more on that later ?)
- Critical sociology insists on the alienation and sufferings of people
- Rational Choice Theory part of MI paradigm and thus not popular
Penninx, Rinus, & Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas (2016), ‘The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool
and as a Policy Concept’, in Integration Processes and Policies in Europe (Springer Cham), pp. 11-29
- Integration: refers to process of settlement, interaction with the host society, and social
change following immigration (p. 11)
- Two-way process: host society doesn’t remain unaffected
- New institutional arrangements come to exist to accommodate immigrants’ political, social,
and cultural needs
- Many researchers focused only on newcomers and changes in their ideas and behaviour,
others have focused on the receiving society and how it reacts to newcomers (p. 12)
o Question of whether newcomers have established their own institutions in the new
society; and to what extend and how have institutions of the receiving society
reacted to newcomers
o Problem of assumption that newcomers must conform to the norms and values of
dominant majority to be accepted.
- Schinkel: very notion of society is problematic; implies existence of homogeneous and
cohesive social environment in which migrants must integrate. (p. 13)
- Integration as contested but central to debates on settlement of newcomers in host societies
- Lots of definitions p. 13
- Chapter wants to set up an analytical framework for the study of integration processes and
policies
- Summary is there go see
Conclusion
- Many scholars reject concept of integration, argue that it is normative and teleological in
nature – concept still central in studies and academic debates (p. 26)
- Comparison is key when aiming to explain differences and similarities in outcomes
- Most comparative research on integration policies has been limited to Europe (p. 27)
- Looking into geographic outside may help finally strip the concept of integration from its
normative and western-centric character
200 word forum discussion:
Week 3: labour and skill shortages – country of origin and country of interest
, Presentation: case study; crooks of literature, main points; evidence from two countries draw
altogether with a conclusion; 20mins max, 6-8 slides
Say seminar 2 when sending him 3 presentation topic choices
Idea of religion in France and US (religiosity)
Debate:
- ‘cross-national trends in economic and family admissions policies differ in important ways
from the ‘convergence hypothesis’ outlined by Hollifield et al (1994, 2004, 2014)
- 1:30pm Friday
- Gap hypothesis and convergence hypothesis
- Do 2 recommended readings and the Hollifield reading
- Convergence meaning that states are adopting similar policies regarding immigration control;
Joppke, Christian (1998), ‘Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration’, World Politics, vol. 50,
no. 2, pp. 266-.
- Why do developed states of the North Atlantic region accept more immigrants than their
generally restrictionist rhetoric and policies intend ?
- Gap between restrictionist policy goals and expansionist outcomes
- Accepted through asylum-seeking and family reunification of labour migrants
- Sovereignty as rule-making authority and empirical capacity to implement rules
- Important to respect rights of persons and not just of citizens
- Penetration of countries by multinational corporations created push of uprooted and mobile
labour force seeking entry into the core countries of the world system.
- Argument that capacity of states to control immigration has not diminished but increased
- States being stopped from turning away immigrants by for the U.S. logic of client politics and
PR, and for EU legal and moral constraints
Family Immigration in Europe (p. 281)
- Unlike the U.S., Europe closed its doors to new immigration over 20 years ago
- Postwar immigration to Europe has been a nonrecurrent, historically unique process –
immigrants acquired “by default”
- Europe had to let in family migrants, and recognise the moral and legal rights of those
initially admitted
- He argues its ‘client politics’
- Stopped acting in the interest of employers wanting cheap labour; now acting on behalf of
collective goals like social integration and the integrity of nationhood immigration that
still happened was of right or morally tolerated migration: state against immigrants vs the
immigrant seeking family unity, which states cannot deny (p. 282)
- Primary and secondary immigration (unheard of in the U.S. !): primary immigration actively
recruited, like guest-worker regime, or passively tolerated in absence of restrictions, as in
postcolonial regime; secondary immigration occurs after recruitment stop or introduction of
restriction, in recognition of family rights of primary immigrants, i.e. South Asia, Afro-
Caribbean to Britain or Turks in Germany
o Specific, elaborate discourse of rights and moral obligation evolves
o Allows EU to act humanely and generously to those once admitted, slamming the
door on anyone else
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