New book ‘Contesting Integration, Engendering Migration’
This book arose out of the conference Migrant labour: Contested integration, prospects for citizenship organized by the editors in Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 2011. The conference was organized in a collaboration between the Peace Institute from Ljubljana and City University from London and was co-funded by the East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program – Open Society Foundations – and Slovenian Research Agency. The conference is related to the project PRIMTS (Prospects for Integration of Migrants from ‘Third countries’ and their Labour Market Situations: Towards Policies and Action, 2008-10), funded by the European Commission, European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals and was organized as its concluding event.
The central focus of the book is to unravel integration as a contested concept. Replaced by a problematic assimilationism, integration was seen as providing a way forward by stimulating debates and policies aimed at the inclusion of migrants within increasingly diverse societies. Integration is here analysed sociologically, politically and legally as a concept that underpins processes of nationalization and ethnicisation and which problematises difference and diversity. The book explores how various mechanisms of “nationalizing citizenship” are reproduced within migration and integration policies and analyses their influence on migrants’ lives.
Particular focus of the book address the following: theoretical and empirical considerations of migrant incorporation in Europe; citizenship, belonging and migration; gendered structures, experiences and policies; intersectionalities in migration (providing an intersectional lens for analysing the incorporation of migrants against the background of experiences related to ethnic, gender and class structures); and migrants’ strategies of coping with nationally embedded protectionism. The book examines the impact of policies and gendered life patterns (family obligations, gendered employment, care roles) on ‘integration’ processes.