Stop speaking about "immigrants"?

The discussion on the debate site Newsmill continues, today with a piece by Nima Gholam Ali Pour. He argues that the Swedish discourse has been focused on solutions that assume that immigrants is a homogenous collective that can be integrated through collectivist policy measures, for instance the "Sweden contract" proposed by the conservative party wherein immigrants would promise to follow Swedish laws (as if people residing in Sweden were not obliged to do so anyway). He goes on to state that a fundamental flaw of the discourse is a lack of definition of the term "integration" itself, and this is of course an important observation: if the end goal of a policy has not been properly defined, then how can it ever be achieved?

However, his own piece also lacks clarity in this regard. For instance, he notes that there are many reasons for why "people have not become integrated". The sentence structure itself is quite revealing. The people he is talking about - immigrants - are to "become integrated". By whom? Who is doing the active work? Strictly speaking, integration is a process of negotiation whereby two (or more) bodies, institutions or systems unite, wherein all the concerned parties are subjects and contribute. Agency is available and required for all parties for integration to succeed, otherwise it is probably more appropriate to speak about assmiliation, where one dominant party defines the terms and conditions to which the weaker party has to adjust.

Finally, he reaches goes on to state that Sweden has become divided into "Swedes" and "immigrants"  as a result of the collectivist approaches and policies that lay the burden of adaption on "immigrants", and concludes that it is time to stop speaking about "immigrants". While it is true that terms like "immigrant" can easily become loaded with negative meanings and lead to collectivist treatment of ethnic "others", the solution is hardly to do away with the term itself. This denies the rich and often formative experience that is a part of changing country of residence. I can't see any reason why the people who went through this process should be denied the possibility of drawing upon this experience as they enter public space. Moreover, only in a social context that views difference as something negative can this experience be seen as problematic or even threatening the collective identity of the community.

It seems to me that it would be more prudent to pursue a policy framework where difference is accepted and respected, instead of trying to ban terms like "immigrant" from the public discourse.

Swedish views on integration

The Swedish political right and left have entered into polemics on the debate site Newsmill. Nisha Besara is concerned about the direction the political right seems to be taking, noting that making demands on immigrants to adjust (i.e. assimilate) is becoming increasing acceptable in this camp. Her main concern is that the politics of integration will become a battering ram for dismantling the Swedish welfare state.

This causes Markus Uvell, of the right-wing think tank Timbro, to retort that the political left is more concern with maintaing outdated welfare systems than finding real solutions to integration issues.

Both make some interesting points. Beshara points out that the notion that the majority is always right (and thus immigrants, always in the minority, has to assimilate without any quibbles) is hardly a very liberal stance. This is a good point, but then the political right also consists of many conservatives, for whom this kind of collectivism is hardly incosistent with core ideological commitments.

Uvell's points that the entrenched last-employed-first-laid-off rule does have significance for the exclusion of new arrivals on the labour market (i.e. newcoming immigrants) also has some potency.

Both sides also have one fundamental weakness to their argument, as well. Both discuss immigrants as objects for the, albeit well-meaning, attention of primarily Swedish public actors. In neither the right wing or the left wing discourse are the immigrants entrusted agency or competence of their own.

Indeed, the only policy solution that might address this is the one proposed by then-integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni (replaced after the election by Erik Ullenhag) by in late 2009, where the civil society will get an increased role during the introduction to the labour market. Its outcome will, of course, depend greatly on how it's actually implemented but it is noteworthy that its potential have been quite overlooked in the Swedish public debate, which remains quite state-centred.

A retort to Angela Merkel

The German chancellor recently commented that Multiculturalism had been a failure in Germany. In this piece in the major Canadian daily the Globe and Mail, associate professor Irene Bloemraad rebuffs that claim. She simply argues that Multiculturalism cannot have failed in Germany since the country has never genuinly adopted such policies. She goes on to state that the countries that have been the most multicultural, Canada and Australia, generally also have been the most succesful in terms of rates of naturalization rates and sense of belonging.

This is a very interesting argument. It reminds the reader that multiculturalism consists of fairly particular set of policies that not all countries have adopted to the same extent. This is often forgotten in the public debate, where it is simply assumed that the rhetoric of Multiculturalism (which has been more widely adopted than the actual set of policies) somehow reflect political practices as well. The vagueness of the debate in this regard not doubt facilitates populist clamour for increased assimilatory alternatives, since multiculturalism tends to become a catch-all phrase for any type of policy that is perceived as too generous towards the "others".