Within migration studies, the concept of integration has been observed to have multiple and shifting meanings (Ager & Strang, 2008). Its understandings are contextual and contested as they differ in time, space and between the various parties involved. Its ambiguity also derives from how the concept refers to numerous processes pertaining to an individual’s life, including employment, housing, education, health and social networks. The vagueness of the integration concept stems, as argued by scholars critical of the concept (Favell, 2019; Korteweg, 2017; Rytter, 2019; Schinkel, 2018), from the careless adoption of policy and popular discourses in academic analysis.
The entanglement of policy and academic discourses pertaining to migrant integration is problematic for further reasons. Most relevant for this article is that academics often adopt a normative understanding of migrant settlement, where migrant practices and performance are compared with those of the majority population. Employed as a benchmark of integration, the majority population is imagined as ‘a bloodless, unmovable, undifferentiated, static’ (Schinkel, 2018, p. 7) yet also a harmonious whole that is acquitted of having any problems. The majority population is exempted from the integration equation. Conventional research, rather than conceiving it as a process pertaining to the society as a whole, renders migrants as problematic subjects and places the responsibility for integration on them.
Here, in contrast, integration is conceived of as a two-way process (Ager & Strang, 2008) that pertains not only to individuals but also requires accommodation on the part of the receiving society. To account for the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within the destination country, Phillimore (2021) suggests a focus on the so-called opportunity structures. She understands refugee integration opportunity structures as clusters of resources, arrangements and routes that either facilitate or undermine integration, such as xenophobia or foreign qualification recognition procedures. She delineates five opportunity structure domains—locality, discourse, relations, structure, and initiatives and support—and outlines how the places where refugees live, through their availability of housing, healthcare and employment, shape their integration processes and outcomes. The media and political discourses also play a central role in refugee integration, as they inform the emotional orientation of the receiving communities towards refugees, shaping the inclusiveness or discriminatory stance of interpersonal relations. Asylum, integration, family reunification and naturalisation policies have also been identified as key structural factors moulding the settlement of refugees in addition to the support services offered through integration programmes and support organisations.
Focusing on CIPs in three different contexts, this article is particularly interested in the opportunity structures that arise through the characteristics of support services. I argue that in order to explore the ways in which CIPs provide integration-impeding or integration-furthering opportunities, it is useful to highlight how the participants perceive identification contestation processes that transpire within such programmes.
Civic integration programmes as loci of identification contestations
Migration and flight, in particular, represent life disjunctures that bring substantial changes, including the transformation of one’s sense of self. Fleeing one’s home country often entails not only the loss of a homeland, family and friends, familiar lives and jobs, but also a sense of who one is and where one belongs in the social fabric (Wehrle et al., 2018). Highly educated refugees experience losses of both social and occupational status (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2006). In the destination country, they have to figure out who they are and who they want to be.
This article takes a dynamic view on identities, where identities are not understood as essential entities that are simply chosen or ascribed but rather reproduced through a dialectic interplay between internal self-identifications and external categorisations (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000; Jenkins, 2000, 2008; Zetter, 1991). Indeed, the concepts of self-identification and categorisation, in addition to self-understanding and labels, provide useful heuristic tools to disentangle the forces encompassed within the identification contestation processes. Self-identification refers to the contextual act of characterising and positioning oneself in relation to others, and it can be either categorical or relational. In contrast, categorisations refer to identifications imposed on individuals by others. They can be performed either by specific actors, for example, individuals or political bodies, or occur by means of, for instance, public discourses. Acts of self-identification are closely connected to a person’s own sense of themselves (i.e. self-understanding) which involves one’s idea of who one is and of one’s social location, and therefore, how one should be prepared to act. Concurrently, categorisations always come hand in glove with the processes of labelling. Labels can be conceived of as marks of categorisations; they represent a set of meanings assigned to the bearer of the label associated with a given category.
In the destination country, highly educated refugees typically seek to find employment that is commensurate to their educational level and occupational experience. However, the pursuit of employment is not only a question of economic self-sufficiency but is also closely tied to the question of who one is and who one wants to be. Highly educated refugees' occupational aspirations are informed, among others, by their self-perceptions as motivated, ambitious, work-loving individuals eager to contribute to the receiving society (Mozetič, 2021; Willott & Stevenson, 2013). When seeking to attain the desired occupational goals, highly educated refugees encounter numerous hurdles. Whereas the devaluation of their educational credentials and work experience has been observed as one of the most notable challenges (Khan-Gökkaya & Mösko, 2021), many scholars also foreground the impeding effect of the imposed refugee categorisation. In his article on Syrian refugee artists in Austria, Parzer (2021) shows how being categorised as a refugee, by bureaucratic institutions and in everyday encounters with the majority population, affects artists’ practices, and their positioning and self-representation in cultural markets. Being seen as refugees creates the expectation to speak for the refugee community, rather than to express themselves beyond their refugee self. Showing how Dutch integration programme represents a core practice of Othering migrants like refugees, Blankvoort et al. (2021) claim that the programme not only fails to contribute to the integration of its new members, but further perpetuates their marginalisation.
The refugee label is shifting and dynamic, assuming various meanings. Refugee categorisation can be seen as a “privileged” one (Cole, 2018) for granting access to international protection and integration support services (Ludwig, 2016; Mozetič, 2018). Refugees are occasionally depicted as defiers of authoritarian regimes and individuals eager to seize the given second chance at life (Haines & Rosenblum, 2010). The refugee label is, however, also a source of stigmatisation and marginalisation. Often, refugees are labelled as helpless, desperate, and suffering victims without agency, in addition to being an economic burden and a potential security threat (Gupte & Mehta, 2007; Ludwig, 2016). As such, the refugee label is not neutral but rather conveys a set of judgements and expectations, acting as a vital element that positions groups within symbolic orders (Zetter, 1991).
Given that CIPs are affiliated with states and public institutions, the categorisations and labels that arise from within them can be distinguished from those used by individuals, in that they are formalised. Their apparent objectivity, however, often obscures the power dynamics comprised within them. They have the capacity to dictate, cement and alter how we think of and engage with the world around us (Moncrieffe, 2007). Through possessing the power “to state what is what and who is who” (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, p. 15) and to impose such categorisations and labels upon others, the state as well as other public institutions represent some of the most paramount agents of the construction of social reality. While state categorisations and labels can be contested or changed (Crawley & Skleparis, 2018), their capacity to shape how people are regarded and treated, to determine which issues are presented and how they are to be thought of cannot be denied.
As such, the categorisations refugees are (or perceive themselves to be) classified within have real-life consequences for them, affecting how they behave and are treated, constrained and assisted. CIPs shape refugees’ understanding of their occupational opportunities, education and career pathways. Depending on the ways the perceived categorisations and self-ascribed identifications play out within these programmes, refugees not only experience diverse identification contestations but also foster different integration responses that inform their labour market trajectories. Identification contestations that refugees perceive to transpire within CIPs thus create specific opportunity structures which either curb or advance refugees’ efforts to attain the set occupational goals.