Who Gets to Belong? Reclaiming Integration as a Democratic Project On Integration as a Contested Political Process

Abstract

Who gets to belong, and on what terms? This article conceptualises integration as a contested political process through which democratic societies negotiate membership, belonging, and the relationship between cultural identity and equal citizenship. Drawing on our book Migration and the Politics of Integration, we examine the tension between the nation as a cultural community (ethnos) and as a political community of citizens (demos). We show how civic integrationism increasingly makes membership conditional upon cultural, economic, and behavioural conformity, shifting inclusion from rights towards conditional belonging. At the same time, struggles over belonging unfold through mainstream political institutions and sub-political forms of contestation and mobilisation. By bringing these dynamics together, the article argues for a relational perspective that moves beyond migrant adaptation to examine how inclusion and exclusion are mutually constituted through interactions among migrants, citizens, institutions, and political actors.