Current Issues in Migration Research

Introduction to the Special Section: Conceptualisations and Dynamics of Integration in the Context of Migration and Diversity

The Editors of CIMR — 2026-09-30

Integration for Migrants, Democracy for Citizens: Why Integration Is Beyond Redemption

Stefan Manser-Egli — 2026-09-30

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.

When Do Migration-Related Differences (Not) Matter? The Perspective of Postmigration

Maja Povrzanović Frykman — 2026-09-30

This article introduces the perspective of postmigration as a way of rethinking integration in societies shaped by migration. Rather than positioning migrants as outsiders who need to adapt to society, postmigration understands migration-related plurality as constitutive of society and shifts attention to acceptance, participation, and equal opportunities for everyone. Drawing on research presented in the book 'Academia and Cultural Production in Sweden: Postmigrant Trajectories, Alliances, and Negotiations' (transcript Publishing, 2026), the article demonstrates the analytical value of this perspective by looking at the use of Swedish and English in academia as a highly internationalised professional field. It discusses shifting linguistic positionings that cannot be reduced to a migrant-native binary. Practices of collegial support and translanguaging illustrate how linguistic differences may be negotiated pragmatically to enable participation. The article argues that postmigration illuminates how differences acquire, lose, or regain significance in specific situations and how participation is continuously negotiated across migration-related differences.

Who Gets to Belong? Reclaiming Integration as a Democratic Project

Karin Borevi — 2026-09-30

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.

Beyond Indicators: Emotional Labour and the Lived Dynamics of Refugee Integration in Germany

Shaden Sabouni — 2026-09-30

Integration in Germany is commonly assessed through visible indicators such as language acquisition, labour-market participation, and compliance with institutional expectations. Drawing on qualitative interviews, participant observation, and informal conversations with 18 Syrian refugees, this article argues that such indicators capture only part of refugees’ lived experience. Integration also involves emotional labour: managing frustration, performing motivation and gratitude, controlling visibility, and sustaining self-worth under continuous evaluation and conditional recognition. These dynamics appear in language courses, job-centre meetings, workplace encounters, and everyday social interactions. Participants often fulfilled formal expectations while still experiencing downward mobility, fragile recognition, and emotional exhaustion. By linking integration research with scholarship on emotional labour and recognition, the article shifts attention from refugees’ supposed deficits to the emotional work produced by integration regimes and unequal opportunity structures. Integration, it argues, is not only measurable participation, but a lived process shaped by evaluation, conditional recognition, and unequal social relations.

"Am I a Migrant?" Experiences of Return Migration and (Re)integration in Sweden

Maja Cederberg — 2026-09-30

This article examines the underexplored phenomenon of return migration among Swedish citizens and their families. This group is often excluded from the public debate on migration and integration, despite constituting a significant share of recent arrivals to Sweden. The article draws on an ongoing research project that uses narrative interviews to explore the experiences of members of 18 families who have returned after periods of employment abroad. Here, we focus specifically on adult returnees who have grown up in Sweden. The article shows that return and (re)integration is not a straightforward process, challenging assumptions of a privileged, insider status among returnees. Returnees frequently encounter discrepancies between expectations (of an easy return) and lived experiences across domains such as employment, education, social networks and culture. By illustrating that return migration involves complex negotiations of home, identity and belonging, the article highlights the need to challenge underlying assumptions relating to the category of migrant and the concept of integration in Sweden.

"In Sweden, We Are Uzbeks, in Uzbekistan, We Are Swedes": Selective Integration among Migrant Women from Uzbekistan in Sweden

Lola Ruzikulova — 2026-09-30

This article explores how female migrants from Uzbekistan negotiate ethno-cultural identity, gender roles and sense of belonging within the Swedish sociocultural context. Based on in-depth interviews with highly educated Uzbekistani women, it shows that integration is not a linear or uniform process. Participants demonstrated complex and context-dependent ways of integrating into the sociocultural life of Sweden, selecting elements both from their country of origin and from the host society. The article argues that situational identity is the mechanism through which this selective integration is accomplished.

Rumslig närhet, blandning och social integration—möjligheter, begränsningar och villkor

Margareta Popoola — 2026-09-30

Utgångspunkten för denna artikel är den politiska debatt som brutit ut i den svenska politiska valrörelsen 2026, som handlar om bostadsområden och rumslig närhet för att skapa etnisk och social integration. Genom ett nedslag i forskningen om områdesförändring, gentrifiering, social blandning, nätverk och tillit diskuteras sambandet mellan rumslig närhet och sociala relationer. Genomgången visar att en heterogen befolkningssammansättning kan skapa möjligheter till kontakt mellan grupper, men att rumslig närhet i sig inte med nödvändighet leder till social integration, ökad tillit eller social gemenskap. Samhällsvetenskaplig forskning visar att stark intern sammanhållning kan vara både inkluderande och exkluderande. I artikeln lyfts Allports kontakthypotes fram där jämlik status, gemensamma mål, samarbete och institutionellt stöd bedöms vara centrala förutsättningar för att kontakt ska kunna överskrida sociala gränser. Slutsatsen är att ett effektivt arbete mot segregation behöver också beakta de ekonomiska, sociala och institutionella villkor som formar människors möjligheter att mötas och utveckla varaktiga relationer.

"Online Work Kept Me Alive": Psychosocial Value of Remote Work Among Protection Holders from Ukraine

Katarina Mozetič — 2026-09-30

Remote work has become a noticeable but underexplored form of employment among refugees. Existing research has focused on the socioeconomic opportunities and precarities of digital labour, paying less attention to what remote work means to refugees. Drawing on interviews with protection holders from Ukraine who have worked remotely while in Sweden, this research brief examines the psychosocial value they attach to their remote employment. Using Marie Jahoda’s latent deprivation model and two participants’ stories, this article shows how remote work can restore purpose, sustain social ties and enable meaningful activity during displacement. This supports refugee wellbeing even when remote work provides little income or when it supplements, rather than replaces, local employment. In conclusion, the article calls on policy and practice to assess refugee labour market participation beyond local employment, enabling capabilities and self-determined, psychologically meaningful livelihoods.

From the Margins as Method: Notes on Making Political Culture from the Inside

Ariam Tekle — 2026-09-30

This article takes the margin not as a condition to overcome, but as a method. Written from the position of a domestic worker and cultural producer in Milan, it traces how communities most affected by racialisation and structural exclusion in Italy are already producing sophisticated political and cultural analysis, largely without institutional recognition. Through two interconnected projects—Blackcoffee_pdc, a podcast conceived as a diasporic counter-archive, and Blackn[è]ss Fest, a free annual festival functioning as a collective laboratory for anti-racist and afrofeminist politics—the article argues that the intimate knowledge produced from sites of structural invisibility constitutes theory in itself, not merely lived experience awaiting academic elaboration. Drawing on Federici, Vergès, hooks, Fanon, and Freire, it proposes a distinction that runs throughout: making community through politics, not politics through community. The margin, here, is not a platform from which to appeal to the centre. It is a site of construction.

Beyond Disinformation, Fanaticism and Interference: The Deep Story that Amplified the Campaign Against Sweden’s Care of Young Person’s Act (LVU)

Jonathan J. Morgan — 2026-09-30

In this article, I use Arlie Hochschild's concept of the “deep story” to explain the resonance of Sweden's viral LVU-campaign among segments of the country’s Muslim population. Drawing on interviews with Muslim public-facing actors—including teachers, lawyers, civil servants, and community organisers—I argue that the campaign’s plausibility derives from its alignment with a broader affective narrative about life in Sweden. Participants describe Sweden as a society characterised by surveillance, opaque institutions, a conditional commitment to human rights, and persistent experiences of unbelonging. These experiences provide a framework through which allegations about social services become plausible on an emotional level, regardless of their facticity. This means that efforts by The National Board of Health and Welfare to counter LVU-related narratives are unlikely to succeed if they focus only on correcting false information. Trust-building interventions must also address the affective and political conditions that make such narratives resonate.

Det svenska riksdagsvalet ur migrationsforskningens perspektiv

Måns Lundstedt — 2026-09-30

I den här texten intervjuas fyra migrationsforskare om det senaste valresultatet. I texten resonerar deltagarna kring hur förhållandena på deras respektive expertområden (medborgarskap, mänskliga rättigheter, vidarebosättning och anhöriginvandring) förändrats under den senaste mandatperioden, och om vad de vill respektive tror kommer att ske under den mandatperiod som kommer.