Migrant integration policy: a nationalist fantasy of management and control?

Integration and how it is to be achieved have only recently become objects of policy and discussion in Ireland. Approaches to integration in Ireland are influenced by: the integration policies of those countries with longer experiences of immigration; EU policy; and the specificity of the Irish experience of migration. The Republic of Ireland is an interesting example of a state that is simultaneously involved in policy initiatives that promote the integration of Irish emigrants and their descendents as immigrant communities in their countries of destination and the integration of immigrants in Ireland, including return Irish migrants. This article challenges the assumption that non-integration is the main problem facing emigrants abroad and immigrants to Ireland and argues that the mode and degree of migrant integration (however understood) depends on a wide and changing range of factors and can take place, in spite of, just as much as because of integration policies and initiatives. Taking three policy reports as its focus, the discussion draws on Foucault’s notion of governmentality to make explicit the thoughts that are largely tacit in the language, practices and techniques of integration as defined and discussed in these reports. The article argues that integration polices as formulated by the EU and national governments can be seen as nationalist practices of belonging that reproduce national boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. They rely on assumptions about migration and the territorialized nation-state that cannot hold in the face of the speed of capitalist development, which demands a rethinking of the fantasy that national spaces, borders and populations can be managed and controlled.