M I G R AN T IN T E G R ATIO N I N A C H AN GIN G E U ROP E Migrants, European Citizens, and Co-ethnics in Italy and Spain
ROX A N A B A R B U L E S C U
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
Book 1.indb 3
10/4/18 7:43 AM
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2019 by University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data x
∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper)
Book 1.indb 4
10/4/18 7:43 AM
CONTENTS
List of Table and Figures ix
Introduction 1
ONE
Migrant Integration and the State 9
TWO Migration in Italy and Spain and Integration 55 Outcomes THREE
Varieties of Denizenship: Rights Regimes and 81 the Importance of (Not) Being an EU Citizen
FOUR
Interventionist States and the Making of 154 Integration Duties: When, How, and for Whom Do States Pursue Integration?
Conclusion: The Freedom to not Integrate: 208 Multicultural Integration amid Rising Neoassimilation
Appendix A. Primary Sources 227
Notes 235 Reference 249 Index 275
Book 1.indb 5
10/4/18 7:43 AM
Introduction The integration of immigrants is among the fundamental chores of states. It requires states to reflect on what defines their people as a nation and to organize accordingly for migrants rights, duties, and a road map to full citizenship. A growing literature examines how states create such integration strategies, but far less studied and explained is how states use categories to distinguish between noncitizens and pursue integration selectively in the context of accelerated regional integration and devolution processes. Unique regional integration projects such as the European Union, as well as further devolution to elected local governments and special arrangements for diasporas abroad and former colonial subjects, challenge entrenched understandings of belonging and citizenship and, in doing so, profoundly transform immigrant integration in European societies. Migrant Integration in a Changing Europe examines the transformation of state-led immigrant integration in two relatively new immigration countries in Western Europe, Italy and Spain.1 A small library could be filled with studies of “models of integration” (for Western Europe, see Bauböck, Heller, and Zolberg 1996; Brubaker 1992; Castles and Miller 2003; Favell 2001a, 2001b; 2015; Geddes and Favell 1999; Messina et al. 1992; Messina 2007; Hansen 2001; Hansen and Weil 2001; Ireland 1994; Joppke 2007a; Koopmans et al. 2005; Schain 1999, 2012; Soysal 1994; Vermeulen and Penninx 2000; Howard 2009; Schinkel 2017 Goodman 202014; and for North America, see Bloemraad 2006; Hochschild et al. 2013). Richard Alba and Nancy Foner (2015, 229) characterize the tradition in migration research as “one of the most persistent ideas in the literature.” While national models of integration have 1
Book 1.indb 1
10/4/18 7:43 AM
2 MIGR ANT INT EGR AT ION IN A C HA NGI NG E U RO P E
largely been discredited, for example, by pointing to the intense convergence across countries (see Joppke 2007a), scholarly concern with these models continues as states diversify their policy reportoire. One assumption is that states pursue integration for all immigrants in the same way. This perspective has been challanged by the local turn in migration studies that emerged from the critique of national models of integration. The local turn focuses on how cities and various regions break from the national philosophy and examines subnational models of integration (Caponio and Borkert 2010; Alexander 2007; Favell 2001a; Ireland 1994; Hepbrun and Zapata-Barrero 2014; Zapata-Barrero, Caponio, and Scholten 2017). Yet such research reproduces the same assumption that equates one administrative unit to one model of integration. This book therefore is a journey on a well-traveled road in migration studies: a study of national models of integration in Western Europe. Yet it embarks on this road with the mission of uncovering new paths. It seeks to theorize state intervention in integration by discussing the roles of group differentiation and Europeanization. It differs from the studies cited above in that it focuses on the efforts states2 make to integrate third country nationals, European Union (EU) citizens from new and old EU member states, and co-ethnics and argues that states pursue different integration strategies for different immigrant categories. These last two immigrant categories have tended to be overlooked; to my knowledge, this book is the first attempt to analyze the four categories together. Some migrants have simply remained at the margins of the state’s intervention in immigrant integration. Citizens of other European states, for instance, are seldom invited to integrate anywhere in Europe. They settle and build entire lives in another EU country without being considered candidates for integration. For instance, in the Netherlands, Europeans and citizens of developed nations are exempted from the examinations that are mandatory for immigrants from other countries. In these cases, rather than pursue integration, states maintain a laissez-faire stance and let incorporation take a natural course. This raises a number of questions. Given that since the postwar period states have made a definite move toward stronger intervention in integration and that all states have now developed some form of integration strategy, why do states remain passive when it comes to particular migrants? And why do states simply “let be” some migrants—using Dora Kostakolopoulou’s (2010b) expression—but formulate integra-
Book 1.indb 2
10/4/18 7:43 AM
Introduction 3
tion requirements, sometimes mandatory ones on which rights are conditioned, for others? Nonintervention in this case is even more surprising from the nation-state perspective, according to which all those who are not members of the nation, including European citizens, are foreigners and thus should all be considered candidates for integration. To make things even more complicated, as discussed throughout this book, states break with the laissez-faire stance when it comes to dealing with European citizens from the new member states. The “new” Europeans are included in state programs for immigrant in tegration. Why states act inconsistently with regard to immigrant integration and intervene in different ways for different categories of migrants is a puzzle about which the literature has hitherto remained silent and which this book aims to solve. This book is comparative in approach and seeks to explain states’ immigrant integration strategies across three levels of decision and policy making: national, regional, and local. The empirical material for this work covers the period 1985–2015 and consists in systematic analyses of immigration laws, governments policies, other legal and historical documents, a set of seventeen original interviews with policy makers at the three levels of government in both countries, and statistical analysis based on data from the European Labor Force Survey. While the work as a whole builds on evidence from Spain and Italy, its broader aim is to contribute to a better understanding of state intervention in immigrant integration in contemporary Europe. This book makes three contributions to the literature. The first contribution is theoretical and consists in examining state interventionism in migrant integration and exploring how states pursue no one-size-fits-all integration strategy. On the contrary, states simultaneously pursue multiple strategies that greatly vary from one group to another. While im migrant integration is a prerogative of states, states’ commitments to European and international partners and national interests such as migration control and security, as well as responses to financial incentives provided by EU funding, also shape integration in definite ways. On the one hand, fellow European citizens who are co-participants in the European Union or co-ethnics and postcolonial migrants with whom states acknowledge historical and cultural bonds are not subject to the same integration strategies as other noncitizens. On the other hand, increasing
Book 1.indb 3
10/4/18 7:43 AM
4 MIGR ANT INT EGR AT ION IN A C HA NGI NG E U RO P E
popular discontent with levels of immigration as well as concerns with “homegrown” security threats and a perceived failure of previous state-led integration projects further link states’ national interests with their integration agenda. This work argues that states mitigate the conflict between their interests and their commitments by distinguishing between non citizens and multiplying integration strategies. However, the proliferation of such strategies unavoidably transforms immigrant integration and challenges conventional understandings of citizenship and belonging. This work seeks to connect the integration debate, which traditionally has been centered on the nation-state and national citizenship, and the state sovereignty debate, which has centered on international constraints, national interests. and state capacities. The second contribution is methodological. This book examines strategies of immigrant integration at the regional and local levels as well as the national level. While the local turn in integration studies has led to a collection of recent analyses of integration in cities and regions (ZapataBarrero Caponio and Peter Scholten 2017; Caponio and Borkert 2010; Alexander 2007; Favell 2001; Ireland 1994; Hepbrun 2009), they are rarely linked with national strategies or examined together (see also the pioneering work, Caponio and Jones-Correa 2017). This book is unique in that it studies the development of integration strategies across the three levels of decision making, national, regional, and local, applied to the cases of Italy and Spain. The third contribution is empirical. Despite having received large numbers of immigrants in comparision to other European countries, Italy and Spain remain less known cases in a systematic fashion. As a result, these two cases as well as other “new” destinations remain disconnected from integration debates and policy innovations and routinely excluded from most ambitious contemporary studies of immigrant integration. Over the past decade, the work of Sciortino, Caponio, Zioncone, Pastore, Colombo, Ambrozini, and Finotelli for Italy and Arango, Zapata-Barrero, Bruquetas Callejo, Garces Mascareñas, Moreno Fuentes, Morén-Alegret, Gonzalez, Cebolla, and Sánchez-Montijano for Spain has consolidated knowledge on these case studies. Kitty Calavita’s seminal book, Immigrants at the Margins (2005), is an important pioneering effort to conceptualize and narrate the story of immigration in Italy and Spain in a comparative fashion. This book intends to extend their work and explore in depth the cases of Italy and Spain.
Book 1.indb 4
10/4/18 7:43 AM
Introduction 5
In post-enlargement Europe, the composition of the immigrant population has changed remarkably. Migration from other European countries and co-ethnic migration have become significant elements of total immigration in Europe. At the beginning of 2012, EU citizens represented 38 percent of the total immigrant population and 2.5 percent of the total EU 27 population (Eurostat 2012). Among mobile European citizens, Eastern Europeans from the new member states are more numerous than Europeans from the old member states. The migration of “new” EU citizens is strongly linked to the accession of their countries to the EU. The removal of the visa requirements prior to accession, the right to free movement gained on accession, and the removal of transitional requirements for workers from the new member states gradually made it easier for Eastern Europeans to move and take up employment in the old member states. With regard to co-ethnic migration, confronted with growing pressure for convergence in the EU in immigration matters, many countries have found themselves having to restrict entry to nationals of countries with whom they share historical and cultural bonds. In order to prevent a full stop of these flows, a number of states have opened new “backdoors” for co-ethnics by signing preferential agreements with selected third countries. As of 2012, a total of 33.3 million migrants (EU and non-EU) lived legally in the EU, with 77 percent of them concentrated in five host states in Western Europe: Italy, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France (Eurostat 2012). If immigrants were to form an independent country, it would be the EU’s sixth largest member state. In order to study state intervention in immigrant integration, I survey two policy areas, immigrants’ rights and public policy. My argument builds on original field, legal, survey, and historical data for the period 1985–2016. The interviews were conducted in Madrid and Rome in 2010 and 2011. When analyzing the data, attention was paid to how states address the different immigrant groups in their policies. Studying these two dimensions allows us to explain governments’ responses to immigrant integration and in particular how and why they organize integration differently for different groups of immigrants. Throughout this book, the term “migrant groups” refers not to ethnic groups but rather to the legal definitions of noncitizens that EU member states themselvesmake to distinguish between different categories of foreigners (noncitizens). The four groups are EU citizens, among whom I
Book 1.indb 5
10/4/18 7:43 AM
6 MIGR ANT INT EGR AT ION IN A C HA NGI NG E U RO P E
distinguish between citizens from new member states who are subject to restrictions to the labor market (Romanians and Bulgarians) and citizens from old member states who fully enjoy the right of free movement;. and non-EU citizens, or third country nationals, among whom I distinguish between co-ethnic migrants and other foreigners who are neither EU citizens nor co-ethnic migrants. Identifying EU citizens as migrants can be interpreted as problematic. After all, they enjoy freedom of movement and their arrival in another EU country is mobility that shares more traits with movement within a country than with crossing borders and international migration. Interestingly, the reluctance often comes from the same authors who are comfortable and indeed pedagogical in actively streghtening comparisons between internal migrants and international migrants. Acknowledging the challenges, I propose to consider all classes of noncitizens together in order to understand what it means to be a European citizen and, most important, what integration is; we know that “integration” applies, not to citizens, but to others (i.e., noncitizens, migrants). I take the cases of two new immigration countries, Italy and Spain, and critically examine how governments at the national, regional, and local levels pursue the integration of immigrants. I show that policy makers at the three levels engage in developing integration strategies that are holistic in aim but also distinctive when compared to their understanding of other national models. Italy and Spain were chosen because they are among the top five destination countries in Western Europe for migrants, yet remain significantly less studied than other countries. Alba and Foner’s authoritative Strangers No More (2015) surveys assimilation trends, yet focuses on and draws conclusions from the cases of Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany, again leaving out the newer destination countries that nonetheless account for 10 million of the 33 million noncitizen legal residents in contemporary Europe. At the subnational level, I have selected one region and one city for each country: for Italy, the Latium Region (Regione Lazio) and the capital city, Rome; for Spain, the Autonomous Community of Madrid (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid) and the capital city, Madrid. The core argument is that states pursue no one-size-fits-all integration strategy but rather pursue simultaneously multiple strategies that vary greatly for different groups. Two main integration strategies stand out: the first one targets non-European citizens, is assimilationist in character, and is based on interventionist principles according to which the government (whether national, regional, or municipal) actively works toward the inclu-
Book 1.indb 6
10/4/18 7:43 AM
Introduction 7
sion of migrants; the second one 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 local authorities seeking their integration. Co-ethnics and European citizens from new member states occupy intermediary positions. In both Italy and Spain, Romanians and Bulgarians were included in the voluntary integration programs even after their countries’ accession to the EU. Furthermore, both Italy and Spain opted for temporary restrictions to their labor market. Spain lifted them in January 2009, but it chose to reintroduce the restriction in July 2011 and only for Romanian workers. Italy suspended the restrictions in January 2012. Co-ethnic migrants enjoy a bundle of special rights in both countries. As a rule, they have more rights than third country nationals, but in some areas, such as a fast-track route to citizenship or the ability to enter military service, they also have more rights than do European citizens. However, when it comes to programs of integration, both Italy and Spain include co-ethnics in the broader group of third country nationals and give them no special treatment. Starting in 2009, Italy introduced mandatory, sanction-based integration programs that require third country nationals to take a language test when applying for permanent residence and to sign an Integration Agreement (Accordo Integrazione) upon their arrival in Italy. Overall, there are striking differences in the integration strategies for EU and non-EU citizens. Whereas for the former, states pursues a laissez- faire agenda with no tests to pass to enjoy generous rights, for the latter, they pursue an agenda “in the search of the perfect citizen” (Carrera 2009) via a repertoire of policy instruments and by conditioning the already restricted rights on passing tests on country-specific knowledge. Thus, I posit that there is a continuum of models, from less to more inclusive, for different foreign groups that are simultaneously enforced by one member state. OR G A N I Z AT I ON O F T H E BO O K
Chapter 1 is theoretical and discusses the relationship between immigrant integration and states. It examines the conceptions of integration that have been used in the literature. I emphasize the need to go beyond the orthodoxy of citizen-alien distinctions and propose distinguishing between various groups of immigrants based on the legal distinctions that the states
Book 1.indb 7
10/4/18 7:43 AM
8 MIGR ANT INT EGR AT ION IN A C HA NGI NG E U RO P E
themselves make. I then review and evaluate the literature on integration and introduce a new model for the study of state strategies of integration, which I will be considering throughout this book. The chapter concludes with a summary of my approach to integration and highlights how it differs from other approaches. Chapter 2 introduces the phenomenon of immigration in Italy and Spain and places the experience of the two countries in the European context. It continues with the empirical profiles of the immigrant groups, their integration outcomes, and natives’ perception of the integration outcomes. Chapter 3 looks at the state’s integration strategy based on an allocation of rights (i.e., the rights-based approach to integration). It outlines and evaluates the legal integration regimes for co-ethnics, EU citizens, new EU citizens, and non-EU citizens across the three levels of policy and decision making in the two countries. It critically examines the divergent strategies pursued for each of them and examines their consequences. Chapter 4 examines the public policy instruments of integration that states introduce, the frames they use, and the institutional organization of integration in broader terms. Here, I focus on the legal and conceptual frames that the integration plans use, on who the targeted immigrant populations are, the policy areas in which governments decide to intervene and mobilize funds, the budgets allocated, the consistency of the plans over time and across levels of policy making, and also whether these plans are actually implemented by public institutions or other actors. Based on the empirical evidence collected in the field, I analyze the consequences of the particular forms of organization and evaluate the governments’ commitment to integration across the three levels of decision making: national, regional, and local. Finally, the conclusion reviews the findings of the previous chapters and investigates why states develop multiple strategies of integration for different migrant categories.
Book 1.indb 8
10/4/18 7:43 AM