Doing and Deserving: Competing Frames of Integration in the European Union

Abstract

In the new millennium there has been a shift away from multiculturalism and the politics of difference towards integration and a gradual ‘thickening’ of political belonging. Governments frequently comment on the alleged weaknesses of the multicultural model and the advantages of thicker, communitarian notions of community. In this paper we investigate European Union institutions’ understanding of integration by comparing and contrasting ideas, frames, law and policies in the fields of free movement of persons and migration, respectively. The comparison, and contrast of, the rights-based and participatory approach characterising free movement of persons and Union citizenship with the common framework for the co-ordination of national integration policies toward third country nationals highlights the need for a fundamental rethinking of integration, a more coherent frame and for critical interventions at EU level.

Keywords: Integration, European Citizenship, Discrimination, Basic Principles of Integration