CALL FOR PAPERS
“The governance of belonging on the ground: The implementation of migrant integration regimes in Europe”
Panel to be proposed to the CES Conference (Leiden, 16-18 June, 2027)
Chairs: Iva Dodevska, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Ilke Adam, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
We are inviting papers to form a full panel which we will submit to the 2027 CES (Council for European Studies) Conference, which will take place in Leiden on 16-18 June 2027. The conference theme is “Securing Europe? Reimagining power, prosperity and connection in a troubled world”. Find the conference call here.
Migration is among the most politically salient and contested issues of present-day Europe. In addition to controlling national borders and managing asylum, one key question has been the place of migrants in European societies that increasingly see themselves as immigration countries. A key response to increased immigration and rising proportions of the population who are classified as being of “migration background” have been migrant integration policies, now widely adopted especially in North and Western Europe. Since the 2000s, a “civic integration turn” (Fernández & Jensen, 2017) saw the consolidation of European diversity governance regimes, making measures such as civic integration education (social orientation or citizenship courses), citizenship tests, language courses and integration contracts ubiquitous throughout Europe. These “integration policies” are often mandatory for newcomers and naturalization applicants, with the current political shift to the right reinforcing the conditionality of these measures, by way of tying them to the maintenance of status, access to citizenship, and access to social protection. Integration is also being deployed in debates on security, where it is often framed as a solution to religious extremism and (Muslim) radicalization.
Migrant integration policies have been discussed in the literature in contradictory ways. On the one hand, they are seen as tools of instilling “newcomers” with the knowledge and skills to be an active citizen of their adopted country, thereby reducing inevitable barriers for participation (e.g., Solano & Huddleston, 2020). On the other hand, anti-Muslim backlash and concerns with preserving the cultural core of European societies have led states to use integration as a vehicle for assimilating people of “distant” cultures into the national “us”, with an increasing emphasis on norms, values and “ways of life” (e.g., Onasch, 2017; Blankvoort et al 2026; Dodevska 2025). Accompanying this is an expectation that people “of migrant background” - not only newcomers, but also long-settled and naturalized citizens - bear the burden of proof that they have integrated, perpetuating a constant suspicion notably singling out European Muslims’ place in society. This makes migrant integration policies a key manifestation of the national politics of belonging of European liberal democracies, and therefore an ideal ground for probing into imaginaries of selfhood and national identity. Such imaginaries are intrinsically linked to Europe’s colonial and imperial past, whose legacy continues to underpin contemporary debates on immigration, race, diversity and belonging.
While the civic turn and integration policies as they exist on paper have been extensively studied (e.g. Triadafilopoulos, 2011; Goodman 2010; Blankvoort et al., 2021; Favell 2022), there is little empirical insight into their implementation on the ground. In particular, insight into the (local) constellations of actors that are tasked with implementing integration policies is lacking - from social orientation course providers, language schools, test centers, faith-based organizations and NGOs, to specialized government agencies that oversee integration. Sometimes these actors are driven by motivations and agendas distinct from official policymakers’ intentions, and other times the complexity of, for instance, teaching integration complicates the outcomes of policies. In micro-settings, such as civic integration classrooms, the tension between integration as a mechanism of social support and as an instrument of state disciplining becomes acutely pronounced. For instance, practitioners and street-level bureaucrats often are of minority backgrounds themselves, either because of self-selection or because of the need for diversity of languages in order to make various services widely accessible.
If we approach integration regimes as manifestations of national politics of belonging - and thereby mechanisms of disciplining bodies that are seen as external to “us” - this raises the question of how this politics manifests on the ground, in the complex ecosystem of integration services and the implementation of integration measures. We invite contributions that focus on the following and related questions:
- How do integration practitioners - non-profit workers, social workers, teachers of civic integration, language teachers - translate and mediate state-mandated conceptions of nationhood, often from their own minoritized and racialized positionalities?
- How does the politics of belonging operate on the ground, for instance in small-group, interpersonal settings such as a classroom, or in the provision of integration services such as employment and legal aid?
- What tensions can be identified when intangible notions of norms, values and ways of life are expected to be “transferred” onto newcomers in practice? How do frontline practitioners, caseworkers, and educators negotiate the tension between providing social support and acting as agents of state disciplining?
- How is the implementation of integration policies affected by the restrictionist turn in immigration and diversity governance and amidst a rising anti-immigrant and anti-asylum backlash fueled by the rise of the far right?
- How do frontline practitioners in the migrant integration domain see their own role and the work they do?
- How are discourses around “European” or “liberal values”, secularism, gender equality, and “ways of life” operationalized, contested, or reinterpreted in social orientation classrooms and language courses?
- How are integration policies linked in practice to programmes of deradicalization, preventing domestic terrorism and countering religious extremisms (for instance, in school settings)?
- How do postcolonial imaginaries, racial hierarchies, and imperial legacies implicitly inform contemporary integration pedagogy, administrative routines, and institutional culture?
If you are interested to contribute to this panel, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a very short author bio(s) to
CES rules for submission: Paper panels consist of 3-5 papers organized around a common theme with comments provided by a chair and a discussant. Proposals should be submitted to the CES platform by October 16, 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by conference organizers by December 18, 2026.
References:
Blankvoort, N., Hartingsveldt, M. van, Rudman, D. L., & Krumeich, A. (2021). Decolonising civic integration: A critical analysis of texts used in Dutch civic integration programmes. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 0(0), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2021.1893668
Blankvoort, N., Dodevska, I., & Manser-Egli, S. (2026). The coloniality of integration: Rethinking the science-policy nexus. Ethnicities, 14687968261447880. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968261447880
Dodevska, I. (2025). Europe and its Others: Migrant Integration in Research and Policy. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97981-1
Favell, A. (2022). The integration nation: Immigration and colonial power in liberal democracies. Polity Press.
Fernández, C., & Jensen, K. K. (2017). The civic integrationist turn in Danish and Swedish school politics. Comparative Migration Studies, 5(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-017-0049-z
Goodman, S. W. (2010). Integration Requirements for Integration’s Sake? Identifying, Categorising and Comparing Civic Integration Policies. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(5), 753–772. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691831003764300
Onasch, E. A. (2017). Lessons on the Boundaries of Belonging: Racialization and Symbolic Boundary Drawing in the French Civic Integration Program. Social Problems, 64(4), 577–593. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spw037
Solano, G., & Huddleston, T. (2020). Migrant Integration Policy Index | MIPEX 2020. Www.Mipex.Eu. https://www.mipex.eu/
Triadafilopoulos, T. (2011). Illiberal Means to Liberal Ends? Understanding Recent Immigrant Integration Policies in Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(6), 861–880. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2011.576189