Introduction: rethinking integration. New perspectives on adaptation and settlement in the era of super-diversity

ABSTRACT

This article outlines key arguments and contributions pertaining to new perspectives on the adaptation and settlement of migrants under conditions of superdiversification and ongoing migration ‘crisis’. We seek to re-ignite interest in the development of the concept of integration and to stimulate theoretical and research advancement beyond the normative integration paradigm. Given the growing complexity, acceleration of changes and increased interconnectedness across societies as well as diversification of migrants we argue that the concept of integration need to be reconsidered. Highlighting different ways of thinking about migrant adaptation and settlement we account not only for the multi-dimensionality of integration processes, but also for the diverse nature of migrants and how their multiple characteristics shape integration opportunities and challenges. Using perspectives from multiple countries in relation to voluntary and forced migrants within and outside of the EU, this paper offers theoretical and methodological insights into how the complexity associated with super-diversity might be captured and outlines new ways of conceptualising integration. It also sets up new research agenda around the integration of transnational or transit populations, integration within fluid and super-diverse communities or the relationship between integration and intersectionality with the focus on multi-dimentionality, relativeness and modalities of social relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Super-diversity
• integration
• adaptation
• settlement
• diversification
• complexity

Although migrants already form a substantial part of many societies (Castles, de Haas, and Miller 2013) indeed in some countries immigrants are long-established, perhaps into the third or fourth generation, we are currently witnessing, the superdiversification of many parts of the industrialised world which is proceeding at unprecedented speed, scale and spread (Meissner and Vertovec 2015). A number of organisations such the International Organisation for Migration have highlighted the challenges associated with emergent demographic complexity (Inglis undated). It is clear that while migration-driven diversity is a global and inexorably transnational phenomenon, new local challenges are arising as global tensions are played out at local levels, particularly in the intersection of religion, ethnicity, age and gender, and as new forms of inequality emerge. These processes are often concentrated in urban areas, where the world’s population tends to cluster. With the advent of the so-called migration crisis in Europe it is likely that the need to accommodate the sheer number of arrivals will mean dispersal of refugees from cities to smaller towns and even rural areas locating individuals beyond settlements familiar with diversity and offering unparalleled integration challenges and opportunities. Such superdiversification occurs in the context of rising nationalism exemplified by the rise of right-wing parties, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) and the election of Donald Trump as US president.

These changes have been accompanied by conceptual, methodological and policy developments. Vertovec’s concept of super-diversity, first introduced in a scholarly article in 2007 and now cited over 2000 times, attempted to describe the ‘transformative diversification of diversity’ (2007, 1025) and associated demographic complexity driven by global and internal migration accompanied by other political, policy and socio-cultural changes. Despite some contestation (Back 2015; Ndhlovu 2016), super-diversity is increasingly acknowledged as having moved beyond multiculturalism as both a demographic reality and as an analytical lens through which to describe multiple differentiations. Grillo (2015) proposes considering super-diversity’s multidimensionality as occurring along at least four different axes: referring to ethnicity; to socio-legal and political status; socio-cultural diversity (e.g. language and religion); and diversity of economic status and inequality. Super-diversity is seen as offering considerable potential to fill the current post-multicultural theoretical void (Fomina 2010) through providing a new lens to help develop understanding and knowledge about the ways in which older and novel demographic complexities shape societies.

However, despite increasing awareness and acceptance of super-diversity as a new demographic reality and the recognition that factors beyond ethnicity and country of origin play a major role in migrant settlement and social relations, migration studies has to some extent continued to be dominated by an ethno-national focus. In addition, there are still indications that the essentialising of groups continues, mainly in policy terms, but also in some academic work despite critique of ethno-national approaches and methodological nationalism (Brubaker 2006; Glick-Schiller 2009). Interactions between migrants, their descendants, established populations and the state have tended until very recently to be described and analysed using binary language of minority/majority, them/us and dominant/non-dominant, with policy as evidenced in the recent Casey Review in the UK (2016) stressing the need for migrants to assimilate into what is assumed to be a single majority culture. This approach does not permit adequate analysis of the socio-cultural and demographic complexity that underpins super-diversity – that in many areas there is no coherent majority culture and/or that populations are frequently super-mobile. Moreover, multicultural perspectives have often tended to downplay variables such as level of education, language, gender, legal status or length of stay that may, either individually, or intersectionally, be more important than ethnicity in regard to integration outcomes.

In spite of growing acknowledgements at local, national and global levels of the challenges and opportunities associated with super-diversity, as yet the theory and methods required to research super-diversity have not been sufficiently developed to address emergent complexity. Much research from a super-diversity perspective has been ethnographic with studies focusing on interactions at micro-level in specific localities within which people of different backgrounds meet and interact. The focus on conviviality (preceded by Illich 1973) and cosmopolitanism as elucidated by scholars such as Wise (2005, 2010), Wessendorf (2013, 2014) and Neal et al. (2015) have increased understanding of the lived realities of ‘commonplace diversity’ and associated ‘ethos of mixing’ (Wessendorf 2013).

In the context of ongoing global migrations and growing diversity, issues of migrant settlement represent a complex and increasingly important challenge that have attracted much attention in Europe in the context of both the so-called migration crisis and the UK’s Brexit referendum. To date the most prominent idea used in discussions on immigrants’ adjustment and settlement in Europe has been the concept of integration (Castles et al. 2003; Favell 2001) which focuses upon the participation of immigrants in the life of a receiving society. The EU definition states ‘Integration is a dynamic, two-way process of mutual accommodation by all immigrants and residents’ (EESC 2004). But there is no agreed scholarly definition of the term. Despite the lack of precision around what integration means and concerns that it is frequently used by policy-makers to imply assimilation (see Phillimore 2012) rather than a process of mutual adaptation, integration remains the dominant concept in migrant settlement studies. In recent times academics have argued integration is problematic because of ongoing politicisation; the tendency for studies to focus upon practical outcomes, and the focus upon empirical research, particularly narrow determinants and outcomes (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2015; Spencer and Cooper 2006).

The adequacy of integration to aid understanding of settlement and adaptation in the context of increasingly super-diverse, complex, changing, fragmented and transnationally linked communities where social cohesion as well as internal integration of societies is perhaps now more questionable than ever (i.e. Urry 2000), requires consideration. Furthermore, integration has generally been used to analyse migrant adaptation in ‘traditional’ migration, when immigrants settled permanently in new countries and into majority communities who were seen as being the dominant (usually white) population. The concept does not readily apply to migrant adaptation under conditions of so-called new migration, wherein some migrants do not settle permanently, and/or have close connections to more than one country (Faist 2000), and/or operate in transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) and/or move to the kinds of super-diverse neighbourhoods described by Wise (2010) and Wessendorf (2014) in which multiple minorities or a single immigrant group form the majority.

As yet little attention has been given to the meanings and experiences of integration in super-diverse contexts. Such a focus is particularly timely given the scale of settlement and adaptation challenges faced by many Western countries following the so-called migration crisis and associated accelerating diversification. Many concerns have been expressed by the media, politicians and policy-makers about how, in particular, Europe will cope with settling so many people from so many places. Some of these concerns focus on the impossibility of European societies retaining their identities in the face of so much difference and the possibility of inter-group conflicts. Others attend more to functional challenges associated with housing, schooling, employing and communicating with newcomers.

Thus, this special issue on rethinking integration is of particular importance for research and practice concerning adaptation and settlement of migrants. It aims at expanding existing work on integration by looking at relations across multiple differences and over time and thinking about what they mean for spatial and social mobility and inequalities, proposing new conceptual approaches beyond integration and setting up an agenda for future research into the adaptation and settlement in the context of super-diversity. In this issue, we outline different ways of portraying, researching and thinking about integration either through the lens of encounters or exchange or through proposing new conceptual tools. The article address the challenges outlined and in so doing shifts the boundaries of the concept of integration, offering alternative approaches, while critically considering issues of adaptation, social relations and settlement in the context of super-diversity and transnationalism.

The selection of papers originates¹ from the international conference ‘Rethinking integration. New perspectives on adaptation and settlement in the era of super-diversity’ organised by the Institute for Research into Super-diversity at the University of Birmingham in July 2015 and bringing academics and practitioners together from across the globe to consider how we might rethink integration. Thus the issue is inherently interdisciplinary offering perspectives from anthropology, sociology, ethnography, social-psychology, social policy, human geography and urban studies. We consider integration in various emerging super-diverse settings in relation to both refugees and voluntary migrants within and outside of Europe.

This introductory article outlines our key arguments and contributions and consists of three sections. Firstly, super-diversity is discussed as a new socio-demographic reality and a possible alternative theoretical and research paradigm. Secondly, the question why the concept of integration needs to be rethought is answered. Thirdly, different ways of moving beyond the concept of integration and conceptualising migrants’ adaptation and settlement are presented alongside a brief overview of the articles included.

Super-diversity as an alternative paradigm?

Vertovec (2007) used the example of London to exemplify ‘super-diversity’ when he first introduced the concept. While London has traditionally been viewed as the most diverse UK city, with over 40% of residents of ethnic minority background in the 2011 census (ONS 2012), more recently it is clear that other UK cities such as Birmingham, which houses migrants from 170 different countries (Phillimore et al. 2010) are becoming increasingly diverse. Birmingham is expected to become Britain’s largest minority majority city at some point in the 2010s while other places in the UK such as Leicester, Luton and Slough have already made that transition (Policy Exchange 2015). Moreover, the 2011 census showed that increasing diversity concerns rural as well as urban areas with some rural counties such as Herefordshire in the West Midlands region receiving unprecedented numbers of migrant arrivals with a 213% rise between 2001 and 2010 (Migration Observatory 2013).

It is clear that super-diversity is increasingly a global phenomenon. Geldof (2016) has elucidated the evolution of super-diversity in Belgium and the Netherlands, Biehl (2015) Turkey, Boccagni (2015) Italy, Wiley (2014) the US, Varis and Wang (2011) China, Davern et al. (2015) Melbourne, Vertovec (2015) New York, Singapore and Johannesburg and Spoonley and Butcher (2009) New Zealand. There is much evidence enabling us to argue that super-diversity represents the emergence of a new demographic reality. Although some scholars point out that it harks back to earlier times of movement and mixing (Ndhlovu 2016), the scale, speed and spread of superdiversification exceeds anything previously experience and is in evidence across much of the industrialised world (Meissner and Vertovec 2015). Thus, super-diversity extends way beyond London.

While the notion of diversity was generally related to relatively discrete ethnic ‘communities’ of post-colonial economic migrants and their families, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants from many different countries, means that the number of immigrants of various origins living in places across the world has proliferated and their presence has ‘radically transformed the social landscape’ (Vertovec 2007, 1028). Meissner and Vertovec (2015) demonstrate that the diversification of migrants’ origins is augmented by other intersecting variables such as gender, education, class, age and changing migration channels, policies and legislation. Using OECD data, they showed how between 2001 and 2010 migration channels within the same country varied enormously. Migration statuses shift between categories such temporary migrants, labour migrants, family migrants, humanitarian migrants, students and seasonal workers and are an important aspect of diversification. While in the global South changes have been driven by conflict and environmental disaster as well as development, in the global North much diversity is introduced by states as they introduce legislation reclassifying migrants’ immigration status or change immigration policies privileging entrance by one status of migrant over another. In the case of the EU the advent of the so-called migration crisis has meant a rise in the proportion of arrivals classified asylum seekers although as McMahon and Sigona (2016) indicate, rapidly changing world events such as the commencement of conflict can blur the boundaries between statuses. Status also matters because it determines migrants’ rights and entitlements to residence, welfare, employment and naturalisation. While it is evident that there is a new super-diverse demographic reality it has been argued that super-diversity offers potential beyond being a term to infer demographic complexity. Super-diversity focuses on the ‘transformative diversification of diversity’ (Vertovec 2007, 1025) connecting ideas about the origin of people with other variables which shape their lives and opportunities. While in much public and academic discourse super-diversity is perceived as being defined by the arrival of many individuals from many places, it is important to recognise that super-diversity is conceptualised as a condition wherein populations are diverse in wide ranging and intersecting ways, across different variables (Vertovec 2007, 2011) which can include characteristics of social capital (Kindler, Ratcheva, and Piechowska 2015), individuals’ orientations towards mobility, their openness to developing intimate relationships with ‘others’ and, as Grzymala-Kazlowska (2017) shows in this volume, the extent to which they are connected back home, and from Ryan’s perspective the extent of their embedding both home and away. The perspective of super-diversity highlights that new migration adds additional layers of complexity as it interacts with existing diverse populations thus moving beyond the notion of multiculturalism. Indeed, we might argue that to study super-diversity is to study not only new migrants but the mix of individuals in a place: ‘old’ and ‘new’ international migrants, native established populations and resident minorities.

Meissner and Vertovec (2015, 541) highlight the original intention to ‘recognise the multi-dimensional shifts in migration patterns’ in three ways: descriptive to encapsulate changing demographic configurations (with the emphasis on change), as methodological bringing a new lens moving theory and method away from the ethno-nationalist approaches much critiqued by Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) and as a focus of policy again moving beyond the ethno-focal to include other characteristics such as legal status and length of residence. Vertovec (2015) outlines some of the many ways in which super-diversity is being used by academics in their work which include moving beyond ethnicity as the sole focus of research, to argue for a methodological reassessment of different fields of enquiry, and to focus upon increasingly blurred social categories and complex life trajectories. Since its original invocation understandings of super-diversity have shifted further and certainly the focus has evolved from describing the migration-driven complexification of populations to the proposition that super-diversity offers a new way of looking at the social world and even conceptualising interactions at different levels.

The concept of super-diversity to some extent complements the notion of transnationalism which highlights that migrants often maintain relations with two or more countries and live in transnational social spaces (see Wagner 2017). This type of migratory pattern has been described as a system of social relations that cross geographical, administrative, cultural and social borders (Glick Schiller 2003) resulting in the emergence of a transnational perspective (Faist 2000; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). The increase in transnationalism has been accompanied by arguments about the decreasing role of nation states which it was said had begun to be undermined by both external and internal forces; top-down and bottom-up processes related to transnationalism, diversity and globalisation and which have led to questioning the nation-state-society paradigm (Favell 2010). However, in the context of the recent rise in European migration many nations have sought to reassert national identities and close borders. The example of Brexit and rise of nationalism across Europe as well as the presidential election of Donald Trump suggest that the nation state ideology continues to have importance alongside ideas of transnationalism. Nevertheless, a transnational perspective recognises the fluidity and multi-directional nature of migration and can help overcome ‘methodological nationalism’ in research and the tendency to concentrate on states as a natural unit of analysis (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). A transnational research perspective also encourages the capturing of processes which spread across borders by using, for example, multi-site methodology. From a super-diversity perspective recognition that within the same geographical units both nationalistic views and transnational lives may co-exist with different outlooks on residence and belonging are perhaps further characteristics of super-diversity.

We might also connect super-diverse perspectives to the development of notions of fluid society and super-mobility. Much of the industrialised world has entered an era of ‘liquid’ societies (Bauman 2000) subject to ongoing transformations and processes of permanent and accelerating change. Castells (1996) employs the notion of network to capture complex and dynamically changing society and its endless transformations. As Urry (2000) suggests ongoing mobility, flows and networks as well as overlapping forms of stratification make classic concepts of society and nation problematic. Thus, he proposes the development of an alternative conceptual approach to the study of society: the sociology of mobility – built around categories of networks, mobility and fluidity. At the same time the experiences of de-synchronisation (e.g. mobility of some, immobility of others) must be acknowledged and various disjunctures need to be considered. Yet again recent political developments lead us to question whether the mobilities turn is unidirectional. The so-called migration crisis has been accompanied by fence building exercises on a scale unprecedented in decades, with the Schengen agreement suspended in Europe while in the US the idea of building a 3145 kilometre wall between Mexico and the US may be realised if President Trump’s policy is realised. In this context, the problem of how super-diversity is related to, on the one hand, increased fluidity, mobility transnationalism and, on the other, protectionism, sedentarism, nationalism requires further examination. What is clear is that the emergence of super-diversity highlights the need to take such different, sometimes contradictory, ideas into account when understanding new and evolving processes and changing structures.

Although the concept of super-diversity has become popular in European debates and widely adopted by academics and policy-makers, it has provoked critique. Super-diversity has been criticised for romanticising difference and creating an illusion that difference has been de-politicised (Ramadan 2011). Some point out that the term is conceptually vague offering little insight to the ways in which a super-diverse social context might be defined (Crul 2015). Others argue that incorporation of the term diversity brings with it a set of concerns around the downplaying of processes that underpin inequality (Vickers, Craig, and Atkin 2013) failing to engage with processes of exclusion (Anthias 2013) and eschewing the structural by over-emphasising cultural or local differences (McGhee 2008). Criticism also concerns: its novelty (Blommaert 2013); its descriptiveness resulting from ontology-driven research underlining growing complexity and uncertainty in diversity classifications (Arnaut and Spotti 2014); or its overemphasis on cultural and localised differences at the expense of structural inequalities and politicised retreat from multiculturalism (Sepulveda, Syrett, and Lyon 2011). According to Back (2015), super-diversity fails to address racial issues, social conflicts and divisions; and with its ‘emphasis on superlative difference feeds the fire of public anxieties of an already panicked debate about immigration’. Another purported weakness of the concept is its vagueness and general scope making operationalisation difficult. Although super-diversity tries to capture the intersection of various overlapping dimensions of difference, in practice super-diversity research often focuses on more subtle and individualised ethno-cultural difference. These failings need to be addressed and ideally overcome through endeavours such as this selection of papers.

The nature of super-diversity, particularly the fragmentation of settlement, raises also a series of challenges for policy-makers. The ability of a multicultural model of welfare provision, designed to meet the needs of commonwealth migrants, to cope with the sheer complexity of super-diversity, has been questioned (Schierup et al. 2006). Further challenges include how to encourage effective representation without well-established new community organisations to engage in consultation, and how to know who, and where, groups are, in order to identify their needs and ensure effective public service provision (Vertovec 2008). Meeting these challenges has become more difficult with the increasing politicisation of migration and renewed pressures to reduce welfare provision for new migrants, and to move away from multicultural provision generally. While some have argued that super-diversity glosses over inequalities we argue it can provide us with a new way of looking at inequalities that can disrupt the status quo. For example, Phillimore (2015) used the lens of super-diversity to reveal a relationship between immigration status and migrants’ poor access to ante-natal care and associated above average perinatal mortality rates, contradicting previous research whose ethno-national lens concluded that migrants had low levels of contact with ante-natal care because it was not valued in their cultures. The extent to which super-diversity can help us address inequality depends on the way it is developed conceptually and upon the research focus of super-diversity researchers. With a growing consensus from policy-makers and academics that the EU, and other parts of the industrialised world have experienced superdiversification (Cantle 2008; Parekh 2000; Schierup et al. 2006; Vertovec 2008, 1025), super-diversity offers potential as a tool through which to capture multi-dimensionality and complexity of the contemporary world and to begin to understand the implications for service provision. A strong version of super-diversity proposes an alternative social paradigm of extended complexity and mobility to the more limited and static paradigm which prevails, allowing for thinking about society to move beyond traditional fixed groups and categories. The theory and methods through which to advance knowledge and practical applications have however yet to be further developed. This is hardly surprising given that the concept of super-diversity is barely a decade old.

Why rethink integration?

Thus given the complexification, acceleration of changes and increased fluidity of societies we present new research in this special issue to challenge existing ideas around integration. We argue that the concept of integration or, wider, ideas behind this concept pertaining to migrants’ adaptation and settlement need to be reconsidered. In the face of (ever) rapidly changing reality, including orientations towards mobility and sedentariness, new approaches aimed at redefining traditional categories need to be developed. To reconsider existing categories, we need new conceptual tools and methods more capable of capturing and examining diversity and fluidity. In this issue, we present the case for rethinking of integration to support the development of new concepts and alternative perspectives capable of functioning in light of accelerating social change and temporariness, transnationalism, increasing diversification and challenges of fragmentation and fluidity.

The concept of integration has generally been used to analyse immigrant adaptation in ‘traditional’ migration, namely when migrants settled permanently in new countries wherein there was a ‘dominant’ host population. Integration has not been sufficiently reworked to help develop understanding of migrant adaptation in so-called new migration, wherein not all migrants settle permanently, or maintain close connections to more than one country (Faist 2000; Vertovec 2010). Such relations are often sustained by new communication technologies which can enable synchronised social relations to endure back home and also offer the potential for new spatially unspecific relationships to emerge. As such integration does not help us to truly understand how adaptation proceeds when migrants operate, for example, in transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) or if they move to places where there is no clear majority population.

Moreover, the concept of integration was developed based on structural and functional assumptions that immigrants constituted an alien element needing adjustment and connection to a society characterised by its well-defined boundaries, integrated social and coherent cultural systems. But not only have migration processes changed but receiving societies are increasingly fluid and diverse. Such changes overlap with other factors such as the diminishing role of coherent cultural systems and traditional institutions important for the maintenance of social order and cohesion (e.g. the conventional family, life-long socio-occupational roles and institutionalised religion), accompanied by globalisation, interconnectedness and transnationalism, rapidly increasing inequalities and changing demography (Giddens 2006). These developments raise a general question concerning the nature of social glue in contemporary receiving societies and internal integration within them: ‘integration into what?’ In addition, we witness growing mobility, globalisation and transnational processes and emerging super-diversity.

Contentiously, Urry (2000) observes that various types of mobility, flows and networks, as well as overlapping forms of diversity, make such sociological concepts such as ‘society’ and ‘state’ problematic. Although Urry’s standpoint is questioned by authors such as Muñoz-Escalona and Korstanje (2014), the fact that societies are increasingly complex, diverse and changeable due to migration as well as other factors means that the challenge does not only lie in the inclusion of migrants within society as a whole, but in social cohesion in general.

While the concept of integration has limitations with its adequacy for the analysis of developed and rapidly changing societies disputed (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2015), it continues to have a central role in policy discussions about migrants’ adaptation and settlement (Castles et al. 2003). Bommes and Morawska (2009, 44) argue: ‘integration has emerged as the most widely used general concept for describing the target of post-immigration policies’. In the majority of industrialised countries, and at EU level, integration policies have been developed with the intention of stimulating processes of inclusion.

Although there is no agreement about what constitutes integration, the term ‘integration’ is predominantly used in relation to immigrants’ participation in, and their incorporation into, receiving society. Integration has been also defined as ‘the process by which immigrants become accepted into society’ (my emphasis) (Penninx 2005, 1). While some integration theory emphasises the importance of two-way adaption and the role of institutions in facilitating adaptation, most attention has focused on migrants’ adjustment and the ways in which integration outcomes might be understood or measured (Phillimore 2012; Zetter and Pearl 2000) rather than how the adaptation of host society may be understood. It is often emphasised that integration requires not only relationships between immigrants and receiving society, but also immigrants’ basic cultural competencies and ability to engage with fundamental institutions of their host country.

Integration policy has on the whole developed in such a way as to encourage the adaptation and inclusion of immigrants to life in a new society while maintaining the existing socio-cultural order, where there was assumed or imagined to be a dominant, prevailing and somewhat singular culture and identity as well as belief and value system.

As a result, integration is also often (particularly in public debate) confused with assimilation rather than being seen as one of four potential outcomes of the acculturation process, where acculturation is a culture change that emerges from continual contact between individuals or groups of distinct cultures. Alternatively individuals might experience assimilation, separation and marginalisation (Berry et al. 1989). Berry (1992) argues that integration is a strategy where individuals regularly interact with a host society at the same time maintaining their original ethnic and cultural identity. Such processes can only occur through the mutual adaptation of migrants, the host population and the state (Berry 1997).

Further in terms of focus while integration has been acknowledged to be multi-dimensional (Ager and Strang 2008) and multi-directional (Cheung and Phillimore 2013, 2016) most attention has been paid to measuring integration outcomes: educational attainment, employment, health and income. As a result, analyses of integration have largely been empirically and practically driven, and particularly focused on narrow determinants and outcomes.

While many authors stress the importance of social integration and the interaction between social and functional aspects of integration, in policy terms, the more tangible functional dimensions receive more attention because this is the area in which the state is seen as having most influence (Korac 2003). Fyvie et al. (2003) pinpoint education and training, the labour market, health and housing as the main focus of their review of the integration literature because they consider progress in these functional dimensions to be fundamental for the integration process to start. Several authors have argued that functional aspects of integration can be measured by using objective indicators that compare refugees’ position to the majority (Mestheneos and Ioannidi 2002; Phillimore and Goodson 2008), while others consider that focus upon the functional alone is inadequate because of the inter-relatedness of functional, social and other factors (Cheung and Phillimore 2016; Fyvie et al. 2003). Integration rarely encompasses the psycho-social need for stability and security or identity as highlighted by Ager and Strang (2008) and identified by Grzymala-Kazlowska (2017) as well as Phillimore and her collaborators (2017) in this special issue. A key problem is thus how to bring functional and social aspects together in a way that is useful for policy development and evaluation. Ager and Strang (2008) seek to address this challenge through development of their indicators of integration framework which was intended to aid the assessment of the efficacy of integration initiatives. These indicators range from means and markers, based upon functional indicators; social connections including the three dimensions of social capital: bonds, bridges and links; language and cultural knowledge and safety and stability reflecting the importance of feeling security from persecution or harassment, and settled within an area (Ager and Strang 2008). Integration issues, especially in Europe, have been heavily politicised in recent years arguably restricting the extent to which integration can be understood as a two-way process of mutual adaptation. The adaption of host community(s) to diversification continues to receive little attention. Yet some have identified variables that can affect integration processes negatively, for example the quality of a migrants’ reception, racism experienced (Cheung and Phillimore 2013) and enforced dependency which can result from a lack of initiatives to help facilitate integration (Schneider and Crul 2010) or fear of engaging with local populations.

Acknowledging the variability of integration processes builds upon some of the thinking around segmented assimilation which highlights the possibility of diverse pathways that lead towards multiple mainstreams and may include downward mobility (Portes and Zhou 1993). Schneider and Crul (2010) propose a comparative approach to integration to highlight the variety of ways in which integration in Europe is shaped by different social and political contexts within which institutions play an important role. The recent debate around ‘meaningful’ contact (Valentine 2008) leads to a further problematising of the notion of integration. From this perspective, integration seen simply as contact with a majority group, needs to be critically reflected upon in order to unpack complex issues of contact and their consequences. Not all contact leads to establishment of social ties, but sometimes can contribute to negative attitudes and aversion which Cheung and Phillimore (2013) show can be anti-integrative.

Therefore, the adequacy of integration for understanding adaptation and settlement in increasingly complex and super-diverse societies undergoing processes of dynamic transformation may be discussed or even questioned.

Different ways of rethinking integration in an era of super-diversity?

Given the growing complexity, acceleration of changes and increased fluidity of society we argue that the concept of integration or, wider, ideas behind this concept pertaining to migrants’ adaptation and settlement need to be reconsidered. There are different ways in which integration may be re-examined in the context of super-diversity. Firstly, new ways of conceptualising integration can be offered such as holistic integration (Strang, Baillot, and Mignard 2017) or reciprocal integration (Phillimore, Humphris, and Khan 2017) which offer opportunities to consider interactive aspects of integration. Secondly, alternative perspectives on adaptation and settlement may be discussed such as Wessendorf’s (2017) focus on the interaction between legal status, skills and competencies, attachment theory (Grzymala-Moszczynska and Trabka 2014; van Ecke 2005), embedding (Phillimore 2015; Ryan 2017; Ryan and Mulholland 2015) or social anchoring (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2017). Thirdly, new research agendas around notions lying behind the concept of integration need to be established such as the integration of transnational or transit populations, integration within fluid and super-diverse communities or the relationship between integration and intersectionality with the focus on multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations. McCall’s (2005) differentiation of three approaches to understanding multiple, intersecting and complex social relations can be useful for moving our thinking about integration beyond a groupist perspective where migrants are perceived as members of minority groups who need to accommodate to the dominant group. Referring to McCall’s typology it could be beneficial to move beyond inter-categorical approach – provisionally adopting existing categories to document relationships of inequality amongst groups and changing configurations of power – and intra-categorical – representing an approach which examines the boundary-making and boundary-defining process focussing on complexity within groups, to think of integration from an anti-categorical perspective – which deconstructs existing analytical categories as not adequate for complex and fluid society. As Berg and Sigona (2013) observe urban diversity poses a great challenge to ethnographic ideals of ‘immersion’ and wholeness. Eriksen (2014) also points to the shift from the socio-centric to egocentric perspective which impacts on integration process creating multiple, complex and individualised adaptations.

Our collection of articles discussing integration in emerging super-diverse settings in relation to both voluntary and forced migrants is well placed to advance thinking around migrant adaptation and settlement in an era of super-diversity. We bring together research on integration in the context of super-diversity in a particularly timely fashion given the scale of the settlement and adaptation challenges associated with the current superdiversification within industrialised countries and so-called ongoing migration crisis.

We have selected papers that offer a range of theoretical and methodological insights into approaches capturing some of the complexity and dynamics associated with super-diversity. The papers address some of the challenges outlined above and in so doing mark the beginning of a shift in thinking about how we might research and conceptualise integration in an era of super-diversity (Buhr 2017; Phillimore, Humphris, and Khan 2017; Strang, Baillot, and Mignard 2017). The papers offer alternative concepts and approaches of differentiated embedding (Ryan 2017) or anchoring (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2017) while critically considering issues of social relations and settlement in the context of socio-cultural and legal super-diversity (Meissner 2017), length of time and cultural skills and competencies (Wessendorf 2017) and transnationalism (Wagner 2017).

Focusing upon transition experiences of new refugees in Glasgow, Strang, Baillot, and Mignard (2017) explore the interaction of structure and agency in refugees’ lived experience of integration. They draw upon data generated through longitudinal analysis of the integration experiences of refugees using the Scottish Refugee Council’s ‘Holistic Integration Service’. The authors show how despite refugees’ strong preference for independence and autonomy – aspects of integration that are rarely discussed, refugees’ efforts to integrate are thwarted by state imposed destitution and homelessness which left respondents powerless and dependent. Strang, Baillot, and Mignard (2017) clearly indicate how, regardless of migrants’ aspirations they face poverty and exclusion coupled with disruptions in social networks and experiences of discrimination and racism that can be anti-integrative. The experiences of refugees in this paper show that integration can reverse as well as progress and that transitions from temporary residence (as asylum seekers) to mandated refugee with more permanent residence shape integration experiences disrupting lives and introducing new uncertainties. The authors shed light upon the wider institutional contexts in which integration occurs and, building upon earlier work showing how the shape of opportunities migrants access depends upon the institutional context within which they are inserted. So, while transition to refugee, which is seen as the most positive outcome for an asylum seeker and, according to many, defines the point at which integration should begin (Home Office 2009), in fact the unpreparedness of the state to support new refugees meant for many the transition was traumatic.

Following on from a theme of transition the paper by Phillimore, Humphris, and Khan (2017) use a maximum diversity sample combined with retrospective interviewing to explore processes of network formation in the early years after migrants’ arrival in the UK. They find that contrary to the focus upon the resources which migrants co-opt for integration which portray new migrants as passive and needy, new arrivals actively adopt strategies of reciprocity to develop social networks forming important buffers against migratory stress and aiding access to functional, psychological and affective resources that can further integration. Identifying five interconnected sub-types of reciprocity they explore how these are used to replace or substitute resources lost through the act of migration highlighting where different characteristics including religiosity, immigration status and family situation shape ability to reciprocate and the nature of that reciprocation. Combining insights from anthropology and psychology the importance of exchange as an integration strategy is outlined while the paucity of consideration of emotion, self-esteem and confidence in existing theorisation of integration is highlighted.

Ryan (2017) also seeks to reconceptualise integration and like other authors in this special issue she focuses on experiences over time, rather than integration outcomes per se. Developing on Granovetter’s (1985) work on embeddedness, Ryan proposes the concept of ‘differentiated embedding’ to explore how migrants negotiate attachment and belonging as dynamic temporal, spatial and relational processes. She uses in-depth interviews and network mapping with Polish migrants resident in London to explore how they were integrating in local contexts paying particular attention to themes of mobility and transnationalism which have been applied extensively in research with Polish migrants. Ryan examines why participants extended their stay beyond ideas of temporary residence and how decisions were shaped by inter-personal relationships locally and transnationally. While she confirms the importance of social networks in developing processes of embedding she argues that too much focus on networks risks overlooking the wider structural contexts in which migrants live and work. To capture multi-scalarity and multi-sectorality and gradations of belonging and attachment she proposes the use of a differentiated concept to capture the nuanced interplay of structural, relational, spatial and temporal embedding.

Continuing the focus on Polish migrants living in super-diverse places and upon the diversification of diversity within a so-called group Grzymala-Kazlowska (2017) also proposes alternative approach to integration. Her notion of social anchoring refers to processes of finding significant footholds which enable migrants to acquire socio-psychological stability and thereby function effectively in new life settings. Her paper focuses on the processes playing a vital role in connecting Polish migrants to the British society and the mechanisms of establishing new social anchors while holding on to old ones. She argues that the metaphor of anchoring offers a more comprehensive approach to ‘settlement’ than integration, allowing for in-depth studying of the processes of establishing social connections and developing them into social anchors. Her approach highlights, on the one hand, psychological and emotional aspects of adaptation and ‘settlement’ and, on the other hand, tangible footholds and structural constraints. She uncovers the complexity, variety, simultaneity and changeability of anchoring and the reverse processes of un-anchoring bringing a rare perspective on the role of attachments to country of birth in ability to integrate in a new country.

Wessendorf (2017) focuses on pathways of settlement of new migrants from newly emerging countries of origin who cannot draw upon already existing migrant or ethnic ‘communities’ to find support. Building upon earlier studies on ‘pioneer migration’, her paper outlines the factors that impact on their settlement process, particularly in regards to economic integration. Wessendorf (2017) shows that ethnicity or country of origin are not the main influences on integration processes, shifting the emphasis away from culture and from earlier analyses of the role of ‘bonding social capital’ on integration. Legal status and cultural capital, including skills and competences, most importantly shape the trajectories adopted after migration.

Meissner’s (2017) paper marks a shift in approach to the other papers in that she looks at the minutiae of within group diversity specifically focusing upon legal status diversity and how it plays out in the everyday lives on migrants. She traces connection between population flux and the regulation of migration then argues that immigration status differentiations impact on both categorical multiplicities and on contingent dynamics in urban migration-related diversity. She highlights the importance of better understanding those contingencies in discussing processes of adaptation in contexts of super-diversity illustrating how those patterns are relevant for local urban diversity dynamics. Meissner (2017) concludes by identifying tensions in the goals of state steering and regulating of migration through differentiations in status with the objective of steering adaptations in super-diverse contexts to optimise integration.

Buhr (2017) develops the idea of spatial integration bringing a geographical perspective into the understanding of migrant integration. Departing from the idea that to ‘integrate’ urban space involves being able to navigate it and being aware of its resources, Buhr (2017) introduces an exploratory tool, which brings together processes normally kept apart in social scientific research, namely urban experience and migrant integration. Using ethnographic interviews to explore the ways that migrants learn to use the city of Lisbon, Portugal, Buhr (2017) argues that looking at migrants as skilful agents in the practice of city opens up new avenues for (re)thinking how migrant emplacement works in the context of urban diversity. Thus migrants’ arrival, settlement and integration are emplaced and the process of settling in conceived of as an urban apprenticeship shaping their usage of city spaces.

Wagner (2017) too focuses on the diversification of diversity while turning the usual focus on integration (the country of migration) on its head by looking at the ways in which levels of social and political integration within countries of migration shape encounters back ‘home’. The influx of Moroccan-origin families from many different countries back to Morocco for an annual summer holiday creates the possibility to encounter a super-diverse community of Moroccans-from-elsewhere when visiting the country of origin, many of whom share similar and divergent perspectives, trajectories, geographical and linguistic affiliations. Wagner (2017) examines one formative type of integrative activity occurring on holiday back ‘home’: flirtation. She highlights differences in factors such as languages, regional or national affiliations, Moroccan ethnic and regional attachments and how they shape flirtatious encounters between diasporic Moroccans. She argues the outcomes of flirtations demonstrate some of the complexities of within an ethno-national group frequently portrayed as homogeneous highlighting how encounters at ‘home’ are important for understanding how complexly diverse communities have integrated in their country of dwelling and the ways that integration shapes interactions elsewhere.

In bringing forth this special issue we highlight the wide-ranging contexts into which integration takes place clearly shifting thinking away from the notion of unidirectional integration into monolithic communities. We also highlight a number of different ways of thinking about migrant adaptation which account not only for the multi-dimensionality of integration processes but also for the diverse nature of migrants. We show how a transnational perspective – the focus on ‘back home’ as well as country of immigration can help understanding of integration and we look at the multiple characteristics of individuals which help shape integration opportunities and challenges. This volume by no means addresses all the gaps in knowledge around integration in an era of super-diversity. It is intended to offer new perspectives to help re-ignite interest in the conceptual development of integration as a critical aspect of migration studies and to stimulate further scholarship from multiple disciplines.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The conference disseminated outputs from Aleksandra Grzymala-Kazlowska’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship which received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement No 331421.

Notes

1 The authors wish to express their gratitude to the nine experts in the field of integration and super-diversity who reviewed the papers, the reviewer of the special issue and the journal's editor for their useful comments and suggestions.