Integration for Migrants, Democracy for Citizens: Why Integration Is Beyond Redemption The Case for a Post-Integrationist Society

Abstract

In recent years, many liberal democratic states have introduced the integration requirement to commit to shared values. This commentary examines this integration criterion in Switzerland, which requires subjects of integration to “respect the values of the Federal Constitution”. While the idea of having shared values is comforting and highly intuitive, the requirement is a paradigmatic example of integrationism and the integration dispensation: migranticized Others are monitored in terms of their integration, those marked as white, native, non-migranticized citizens are not. In the case of the value requirement, integration produces the social imaginary of society as a community of value(s), which in turn legitimizes integrationism. Abdelmalek Sayad’s metaphor of integration as an asymptote powerfully captures the paradigm that makes Switzerland an extreme case of the democratic paradox: integration for migrants, democracy for citizens. The commentary concludes that integration is beyond redemption, and that we should speak about democracy instead.