Background
The context of immigrant integration has changed significantly over the past decades. European societies have become increasingly diverse due to successive waves of immigration, and immigrant integration policies have taken many different forms. On the one hand, the host societies have become increasingly diverse. Some speak of ‘superdiversity’ (Vertovec 2007) in this regard, referring to the increasing differentiation in gender, country of origin, mode of migration, degree and type of trans-nationality, legal status, socio-economic status, languages and religions (cf. Hollinger 2000 [1995]; Faist 2009). Due to this diversification of the population, it has become difficult to distinguish distinct immigrant groups. On the other hand, the context in which integration policies are developed has changed as well. Countries throughout Europe have experienced what is described as a ‘multiculturalism backlash,’ which not only reflects the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments and populism, but also more broadly leads to a resentment with how migration-related diversity has been responded to thus far. As a consequence, the multicultural model of migrant integration has been widely abandoned as a dominant policy strategy (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010; Freeman 2004: 95; Joppke 2004). Since the mid-1990s a wholesale retreat of multiculturalism as an official policy strategy as well as a dominant theoretical model is visible throughout Europe (Joppke 2004). Initially, various countries in Europe took a more assimilationist turn in their policies (Joppke and Morawska 2003).
At the same time immigrant integration governance 1 is increasingly considered a local concern. The role of local governments in immigrant integration governance has developed from primarily a level of policy implementation to a level of policy development (see e.g., Alexander 2003; Penninx et al. 2004; Poppelaars and Scholten 2008; Caponio and Borkert 2010). Decentralizations have distributed immigrant integration priorities across players both horizontally (between departments and different (non-)state actors) and vertically (between different levels of government, with an emphasis on the shift towards the local level). Different programmes have been developed to stimulate cooperation between the different levels of government and across departments such as the German National Action Plan on Integration (2010), the UK ‘Local Area agreements’ and the French ‘Local strategic Partnerships’ (France) ‘Urban Contracts for Social Cohesion (CUCS),’ bringing together state and non-state actors in their efforts to improve the neighbourhoods which links back to the earlier examples of area-based targeting.
Against this background a new trend can be observed in immigrant integration policies across Europe. Specifically targeted policies regarding migrant integration are increasingly abandoned and replaced by generic policies that cut across various policy sectors and levels of government. An example of these is the implementation of neighbourhood-oriented approaches, replacing former policies targeted by ethnicity or minority-status, such as the French Neighbourhood priority zones or the UK Health Action Zones and Education Action Zones. A more recent transition in this regard is the shift from ethnic-specific funding to problem-based steering now a common practice in both the British and Dutch educational sector. In these cases targeting by ethnicity or minority status is replaced by targeting on other, more generic, conditions. In other cases (ethnic) diversity in itself has become the central focus of city programmes such as the ‘Engage in CPH’ (2011) programme, aiming to make Copenhagen the most inclusive European city, or the local ‘One Tower Hamlets’ (2014) initiative aiming to bring more cohesion from the city-borough level to London. Other examples are the German intercultural dialogue initiative (2006) and the Baden-Wurttemberg ‘Migranten machen Schule’ (2008) programme both aimed at intercultural training in schools (Scholten et al. 2016).
Against the background of (super)diversity, the multicultural backlash, trends of decentralization and a rephrasing of the target groups for immigrant integration policies there is increasingly spoken of ‘mainstreaming’, referring to similar governance developments in gender-, disability and environmental-governance (see Walby 2005; Verloo 2005; Priestley and Roulstone 2009; Dalal-Clayton and Bass 2009; Nunan et al. 2012). Several countries, such as the Netherlands, have largely abandoned their immigrant integration policies for a generic approach from different, generic, sectors (such as education, housing and labour) (Van Breugel and Scholten 2017). Likewise, the EU has incorporated ‘mainstreaming’ as one of the European Common Basic Principles of Integration (2004) and one of the major pillars of the European Common Agenda for Integration (2005) and the Second European Handbook on Integration (Niessen and Schibel 2007).
This book critically discusses the trend of mainstreaming in integration governance. It aims to develop a better theoretical and empirical understanding of how, why and to what effect integration is mainstreamed. What does ‘mainstreaming’ mean in relation to migrant integration governance? Why do authorities choose (not) to ‘mainstream’ their integration policies? And what are the consequences of this trend of mainstreaming for the governance of integration?
On a theoretical level this book connects the concept of mainstreaming to migration studies. Subsequently, a number of these are explored. Speaking of governance literature, we explore whether mainstreaming is a means to avert degenerative effects of target grouping, and how it can overcome problems of policy coordination. In relation to the literature on superdiversity, we explore whether mainstreaming is an appropriate governance strategy in situations of superdiversity where separate and specifically targeted policies are no longer feasible. Finally, concerning the literature on integration governance, we explore whether mainstreaming requires multi-level governance configurations that involve vertical relations between EU, national, local and in some cases regional governments.
In this introductory chapter we will first conceptualize mainstreaming based in the literature on mainstreaming (e.g., Booth and Bennett 2002), the policy literature on target groups (e.g., Schneider and Ingram 1997; De Zwart 2005) and the literature on migration and diversity (e.g., Vertovec 2007; Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). This conceptualization will be leading in our analysis of the mainstreaming of immigrant integration policies in Europe throughout the book. Finally, this chapter concludes with an overview of the further structure of the book which will provide insights in practices of (non-)mainstreaming throughout Europe as well as reflections on the mainstreaming of immigrant integration from other fields.
Conceptualizing Mainstreaming
In the above-mentioned examples mainstreaming refers to an amalgam of efforts to abandon target-group-specific policy measures and to coordinate integration measures as an integral part of generic policies in domains such as education, housing and employment. In this regard, mainstreaming is about the substance of policy as well as about the coordination of those policies. However, in order to be able to fully understand, analyse and compare the mainstreaming of integration governance, a more precise conceptualization of mainstreaming is required. We will build on the definition of mainstreaming as used in the gender literature to critically assess the application of mainstreaming in the field of immigrant integration. We thus do not follow how mainstreaming may be empirically conceptualized in European, national or local integration policy discourses, nor do we refer only to cases where the concept of mainstreaming is used explicitly; rather, our analysis applies to all situations that fit our theoretical conceptualization of mainstreaming.
Mainstreaming in Other Policy Fields
The concept of mainstreaming is mostly known from the field of gender governance, where the policy tool was introduced in 1985, and formally drafted at the United Nations in 1997 as a “strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of th...