Abstract

This paper examines integration policy strategies in the European Union and reopens the question of whether these policies are being “mainstreamed,” shifting their focus from targeted group-based policy to generic policies that address society as a whole. I first review the work of Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic (2017), who find only a slight trend towards mainstreaming in European migration policy. I then analyse the integration policies of five EU member states—Ireland, Spain, Greece, Germany, and Denmark—to show that mainstreaming is in fact a pronounced trend in established migrant receiving countries. I propose that countries with more recent histories of inward migration, on the other hand, utilise targeted integration practices but, with time, may begin to generalise their policies. My research demonstrates the plausibility of a relationship between time spent as a receiving country and the degree of mainstreaming observable in that country’s policies. This proposed relationship deserves further attention in migration policy research.

Introduction 

There exists a wide variety of traditions in explaining mobilisation and voting patterns in the literature. Different voter models emphasise socioeconomic, institutional, and more recently, psychological factors, in determining voter turnout, with a vast number of both theoretical and empirical studies existing in this area (Blais, 2006; Blais and St-Vincent, 2010; Stockemer, 2016). This study assumes the rational voter model in explaining electoral turnout due to its

The politicisation of integration, in its modern sense, is relatively recent (Scholten and Verbeek, 2014). Hence, so too is the academic study of how nation-states enact and implement (or neglect to implement) integration policy. This paper will explore how integration policy differs across a set of European liberal-democracies depending on their history of inward migration, employing King and Collyer’s (2016) distinction between new receiving countries and established receiving countries. First, I will argue that a 2017 analysis did not give integration-mainstreaming a fair shot (Scholten et al., 2017). In response, I will examine Ireland’s, Spain’s, and Greece’s integration policies and approaches to show that new receiving countries are currently implementing targeted practices. I will then demonstrate how Germany and Denmark, two established receiving countries, have shifted from targeted to generic policies. My underlying argument will hence be that most countries with limited experience as migrant destinations will initially promote integration through targeted legislation but that, over time, as migrant communities integrate and governments become familiar with the process, the approaches will generalise. To conclude, I identify potential mechanisms through which the process of policy generalisation occurs.

 

Literature Review
I will now define key terms according to Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic (2017), identify the purpose and importance of my article and its subject matter, and present their arguments about mainstreaming in the migrant field in Europe, which I critique and from which I draw my own argument.
 

Mainstreaming is a broad concept describing an approach to policymaking. It is defined two-dimensionally, that is, according to policy and governance. It is the simultaneous broadening of policy foci from targeted to generic and “horizontal fragmentation” of governance from state to polycentric implementation (Scholten et al., 2017). Targeted or group-based policies use language and methods of implementation to explicitly target a social group, such as a gender minority or migrant community. Generic policies tend to be area- or needs-based, as they reflect an upward shift in diversity levels in a given geographic area (Scholten et al. 2017). The focus of this research is on the policy dimension as it relates to migrant integration policy, but it is important to understand the governance dimension as well. Whereas state-centric methods, according to the scholars, concentrate policy competencies in a single department, poly-centrism is characterised by “a more multi-level governance approach,” in which competencies are dispersed (Scholten et al., 2017).
 

Mainstreaming can be an especially useful approach to integration policy in places where group distinctions are impossible to make due to extreme cultural heterogeneity, rendering traditional multiculturalism or assimilationism futile (Scholten et al., 2017). Targeted policies can also lead to social othering, as they explicitly identify the target group as different from the rest of society and in need of special care (Landy, 2012). 

 

It is thus a crucial matter for integration studies to investigate trends in mainstreaming. Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic (2017) previously examined the integration practices of Denmark, France, Germany, and the UK to understand “whether, how, and why mainstreaming is actually taking place in the field… and the extent to which the concept of mainstreaming is capable of explaining policy shifts.” Their findings suggest that mainstreaming cannot wholly explain these shifts. They identify only a slight shift away from targeted policies and state-centric governance and towards generic policies and poly-centric governance. In fact, the scholars find Denmark’s to be the only integration approach for which mainstreaming is truly explanatory. Looking more closely at the policy dimension of mainstreaming, the process through which policies become more generic, I argue that Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic (2017) did not give mainstreaming a fair chance by virtue of the countries they chose for their case studies. True, they are all west European countries with relatively long histories of inward migration. But, as the authors note, neither France nor the UK could be expected to mainstream vís-a-vís integration due to certain ingrained cultural practices. The French Republican model of integration assumes the myth of a post-racial, -ethnic, -religious, -etc. society and is thus inherently problematic for any analysis of this sort. UK policies, meanwhile, do not involve integration per se but racism and discrimination, thus only addressing integration in virtue of the fact that many migrants into Britain are racially and ethnically diverse. In short, the cases of France and the UK may be less typical of the European experience than the authors made them out to be. Given that two of four case studies deviate significantly from the European norm, it is difficult to accept generalisations on the basis of their analysis. The importance of mainstreaming in European integration policy therefore deserves further consideration.

 

The subsequent sections of this paper will propose a new perspective on mainstreaming with regard to integration policy. Following King and Collyer (2016), I draw a dichotomy between new and established receiving countries. They refer to countries that became receiving locations after World War II but before the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “first generation,” mostly consisting of North-Western European countries. The second generation consists of countries that did not experience significant inward migration until the post-Soviet era, namely the southern EU countries and Ireland.

 

This research will examine five countries, three of them new immigrant destinations—Ireland, Spain, and Greece—and two of them established—Germany and Denmark. These cases have been chosen to demonstrate the proposed policy shift across a wide range of contexts. For instance, Ireland is chosen as it is a new receiving country that is far removed from the contexts of its fellow new receiving countries. Additionally, Ireland, Spain, and Greece all underwent recent integration policy overhauls, so examination of their practices before and after presents a solid starting point in the process of theorization. Germany and Denmark are studied as examples of established receiving countries because they both underwent this shift in different time periods and have different degrees of political centralisation.

 

Through analysis of these countries’ integration policy histories, I will propose that new destination countries tend to enact targeted integration policies, but with time—perhaps due to increasing diversity—these countries tend to generalise their integration policies. This shift is also reflected in the policy histories of the established receiving countries, which have transitioned from targeted to more generic policies.

Integration Approaches in Five EU-Member States

New Receiving Countries
Following a long history of emigration, Ireland first experienced net immigration in the 1990s. Migrants to Ireland were mostly voluntary and from within the EU; Polish nationals in particular made up nearly 3% of the population in 2011 (Central Statistics Office, 2020; McGinnity, 2016). Though the Irish government itself might say otherwise, Irish policy on migration takes a generally targeted rather than generic approach to integration. Interculturalism, a recurring value in Ireland’s 2017 Migrant Integration Strategy (MIS), involves the active “promotion of equal opportunities, inter-ethnic contact… a shared sense of belonging,” and generic policymaking practices (An Roinn Dlí agus Cirt, 2020; Scholten et al., 2017). Intercultural principles in the MIS, however, are not applied in the policy actions listed in the document. Just two of the 76 actions introduced explicitly involved intercultural practices (An Roinn Dlí agus Cirt, 2020). The many targeted goals and policies include a migrant employment target of 1% and an extensive language education policy for non-native speakers, such as the allocation of additional English language teachers, language curriculum development, an2d additional English tuition for non-native speakers (An Roinn Dlí agus Cirt, 2020; Rodríguez-Izquierdo and Darmody, 2017). Furthermore, according to Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic’s (2017) explanation of targeted policies, the mere presence of an official integration plan is itself enough to consider the approach a targeted one. Though the Irish government strives for interculturalism, its integration strategy in practice has been more migrant-targeted than an interculturalist approach would require.

Spain is also a new receiving country. Spain was a sending country until the mid-1990s, alongside much of Southern Europe and Ireland, when Europeans and third-country nationals (primarily Moroccans and Latin Americans) began migrating to the country (Izquierdo, Jimeno, and Lacuesta, 2016). Similar to Ireland, its integration approach is also targeted. Among the premises of Spain’s Strategic Plan for Integration—again, the presence of which indicates a targeted strategy—is the idea that policies be targeted at the general population rather than migrants specifically, but I find, once again, that this seems to be easier for governments in theory than in practice (Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales, 2007). Of the document’s 40 listed objectives, 28 explicitly target migrant and/or immigrant communities. Looking deeper into Spain’s educational integration, we see this targeting play out. Migrant children in Spain are placed in separate classes, known as specific linguistic classrooms, from their native-Spanish-speaking peers, an extreme form of targeting that has faced criticism as a segregative practice (Rodríquez-Izquierdo and Darmody, 2017). With regards to childhood integration in general, the strategy of promoting access to youth programmes and social intervention processes for migrant children is likewise a targeted policy (Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales, 2007). A principle of Spanish integration is generalisation. However, the plans and practices for integration do not reflect this value, much like in Ireland. Though the strategies may not target specific migrant communities, they do target the general migrant population.

 

The third and final country we will consider in this section is Greece, which is quite atypical in comparison to most European receiving countries. As a European gateway in the east, its receiving country status is due in large part to refugees fleeing crises in the Middle East. Indeed, most first-time refugee applicants in 2022 were from Syria, Afghanistan, or Palestine (European Commission, 2024). Though Greece’s struggling economy has made it a stopover rather than a preferred final destination (Freeman, 1995), before refugees can leave, other EU member states must allow them in, something these states are often unwilling to do. Unlike in Ireland and Spain, the stated values of Greek integration policy are targeted in nature, and this is reflected in explicitly targeted integration policy. Each of the four basic pillars of the 2022 rendition of the National Integration Strategy (NIS) involves language explicitly targeting immigrants (Voultepsi, 2022). The active cooperation of Greek society—the so-called “two-way integration process”—is a supposed cornerstone of the approach, but not only is there little explanation as to what societal cooperation entails, there is also still a strong self-help bent as long-term migrants—refugee or not—are expected to provide for themselves (Voultepsi, 2022).

 

There are compelling reasons to suggest that the similarity in integration policy among these three countries is related to their shared status as new receiving countries. The diversity in history and geography between these cases suggests that my hypothesis is indeed plausible. Each of these countries became receivers in different ways and at different times, drawing migrants coming from and entering different social, economic, and cultural situations. However, they have each developed broadly similar integration policies. While the cross-sectional nature of the analysis of new receiving countries limits the conclusions that can be drawn, comparison with the policy histories of established receiving countries will further demonstrate the plausibility of this hypothesis.

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Established Receiving Countries

I will now examine Germany and Denmark, two countries with longer histories of immigration, to show that they tend to start out with targeted approaches and land somewhere in the middle of the two extremes later on. 

 

Germany’s approach to integration is generalising as it departs from its original targeted practices. Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic (2017) identify Germany’s integration policy approach as “differentialist,” characterised by a decentralised government structure and targeted policies. However, they also note that Germany is in the process of shifting its integration policy in a direction similar to that of other long-standing destination countries. This is slow going, in large part because of German polycentrism, which inhibits change as it gives individual states agency such that they can move at their own pace. Scholten, Collett, and Petrovic (2017) cite regional integration centres, the annual conference of state integration measures, and the National Integration Plan of 2007 as targeted, poly-centric methods. Another example of targeted policy was Germany’s efforts to ease international students’ transition into the labour market, along the same lines as other northern European receiving countries (Van Mol and de Valk, 2016). These are all clear examples of targeted methods, but Germany nonetheless seems to be in the process of generalising its integration strategy. The country has updated the National Integration Plan, now renamed the National Action Plan on Integration. While the earlier renditions were more migrant-focused, the 2018 update significantly broadened the scope of Germany’s integration approach as it emphasises the importance of whole-society cohesion rather than immigrant integration specifically (Migration Policy Group, 2022). The German education system has been the first sector to generalise. Berlin has implemented state-wide education inclusion measures for all students regardless of background; further, all German states require background-independent language testing for primary school students. Though Germany’s generalisation process is slow-going compared to countries with similar immigration histories, it is not only less targeted than Ireland’s and Spain’s approaches, but its trend towards the generic is undeniable.

 

The final country examined in this paper is Denmark, whose integration approach significantly influenced other North-Western European countries, such as the Netherlands, such that a similar trend can be seen in those countries (Scholten et al., 2017; Scholten and Verbeek, 2014). The approach, at first targeted, has modernised to become a balanced approach somewhere between the French Republican model and the Irish and Spanish models. Denmark’s transition to a receiving country occurred after Germany but before the new receiving countries. Though it did not become a receiving country until the 1980s, it was nonetheless among the first European countries to enact comprehensive integration legislation in 1998 (European Commission, 2022; Jørgensen, 2012). It initially took a laissez-faire approach, placing value on self-help (Scholten et al., 2017). To avoid explicitly limiting immigration, Denmark’s integration approach focused, for some time, on limiting pull-factors for certain countries by encouraging independent integration into the social and labour folds and punishing a lack of effort (Jørgensen, 2012). In addition, much like Germany, the Netherlands, and others, Denmark increased pull factors for well-educated migrants (Jørgensen, 2012; Van Mol and de Valk, 2016). The self-help approach, which made “labour market participation both the means and the end of integration” and put migrants in charge of their own integration, remained until 2011, when the newly elected socialist coalition reversed many restrictive policies of its conservative predecessors and began to take a more active approach to integration (Jørgensen, 2012). Rather than shift to the opposite extreme, characterised by the colour- and ethnicity-blindness of French policies, for example, the new Danish administration balances generic and targeted policies. Copenhagen’s inclusion policy for all, for example, removes the focus from migrants in particular by, for example, implementing language education for all starting at the daycare level, regardless of the student’s native tongue, and recognising multiple cultures and languages (European Commission, 2024). The presence of all-day schools in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods is another example of a generic policy, as it takes an area- and needs-based approach. This allows it to have a strong impact on migrants who tend to reside in these neighbourhoods without specifically targeting them (Scholten et al., 2017). Migrant-specific approaches such as a taskforce to promote Danish-language learning for migrant children and an agreement to strengthen labour market integration remain integral parts of the Danish integration system. Hence, Denmark’s integration approach is neither purely targeted nor purely generic, but somewhere in the middle. On balance, we have seen Denmark’s integration approach shift away from targeting and towards generalisation.
 

I would like to point out, as in the first section, the significant differences between Germany and Denmark. Though both have been receiving countries for much longer than Ireland, Spain, and Greece, their timelines are still different. Germany was among the first receiving countries in Europe in the 1950s; as these countries’ economies strengthened, economic migrants from Southern Europe arrived (Van Mol and de Valk, 2016). Germany did not enact integration policy until 1999, much later than countries on a similar migration timeline (Scholten et al., 2017). One might expect this caveat to have affected the progression of Germany’s integration approach, but in fact, Germany’s history matches well with the proposed shift from targeted to generic policy. Denmark was also a guest worker destination but developed later on as a receiving country (relative to other long-standing ones). Yet, its policies developed faster than—though in the same direction as—Germany’s and, as mentioned, inspired other northern European countries’ approaches, such as the Netherlands, which continues to follow a similar approach (Scholten et al., 2017; Van Mol and de Valk, 2016). The long-standing receiving countries have, unsurprisingly, more in common than the new receiving countries; nonetheless, Germany and Denmark are both cases with significant variation in context. Their similarity in approaches suggests that my hypothesis is indeed plausible: that as a state becomes more established as a receiving country, its integration policy trends towards generalised policies.

 

Conclusion

Though this research did not focus on why this proposed policy shift would occur, it is possible that integration policies shift alongside or follow a significant increase in the diversity of a country or city. As noted previously, mainstreaming is particularly helpful when diversity is particularly high and group designations are difficult to make. The degree of diversity required to spur policy generalisation is not reached right away, so new receiving countries can use targeted policies until their population is sufficiently heterogeneous to warrant mainstreaming at the policy level. Of course, inward migration occurs at different rates for different countries, hence why some states take longer to generalise their integration policies than others.
 

Though integration implementation requires more in-depth consideration, I believe I have identified a potential relationship between time as a receiving country and the nature of that country’s approach to integration policy. This argument was supported by examining countries with contextual variation to show that the time as a receiving country was the common throughline. However, my analysis is hardly conclusive, limited as it is to the static analysis of five EU member countries' policies. Future research could both broaden the scope beyond EU borders and include dynamic inquiry into how policies change over time. It could also investigate evidence of possible mechanisms behind this observed shift, including the diversity mechanism proposed above.

 

 

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