Immigrant integration is a hot topic. It's become the politically correct norm to be pro-immigrant but also care about immigrant integration - indeed, a laissez-faire approach to immigrant policy and a dismissal of a need to actively integrate growing influxes of immigrants is often seen as irresponsible. Perhaps that's why organizations like the OECD actively encourage ''the lasting integration of immigrants and their children for selected key groups and domains of integration.'' Throughout the 21st century, European countries like Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway have tailored policies designed to help immigrants integrate, and there are calls from at least some for the U.S. to adopt similar policies. There seems to be a consensus that integration is something good, something to be strived for. But a wise person once said, ''Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.'' When I pause and reflect on whether I think immigrant integration is something to be desired, I find myself in the minority.
First, what the hell is integration? If you look up papers on integration, you'll find different answers. Some focus on language acquisition. Others focus on labor market outcomes like wages or labor supply. These answers at least seem more straight-forward than answers that define integration according to more abstract and general notions of culture. So, one reason I don't take concerns over immigrant integration seriously is it's a poorly defined concept (or at least an inconsistently defined concept).
Second, when integration is defined well, like when using definitions revolving around labor market outcomes or language acquisition, empirical evidence suggests heavily immigrants don't need help integrating. If we use labor market outcomes as an example, there is good evidence that immigrants do not experience worse labor market outcomes than natives, on average, after controlling for obvious things like education. And the children of immigrants do phenomenal. If we use language acquisition as our definition of integration, it's even more obvious immigrants don't need our help - scholars who study ''language life expectancies'' find most immigrant children and grandchildren forget their parents' and grandparents' home country languages. Even in communities that are particularly good at passing on home country language capabilities, like Mexican migrants in southern California, host country language lifespans are at most three generations. That sounds like host country language assimilation to me. Still not convinced? Immigrant communities even assimilate in terms of crime - while immigrants are less likely to commit crime compared to natives, second-generation immigrants are about as likely to commit crime as natives. There you go - near perfect assimilation (along this particular dimension) in just one generation. Back to my first point - are we supposed to consider relatively high crime levels assimilation? Besides, don't immigrants have an incentive to assimilate? Who wants to go to jail, or be unemployed, or not be able to interact with other people. In Denmark, I don't even have to learn Danish because most people speak English, but I still see a private incentive in at least learning some conversational Danish. It's nice to fit in and be able to eavesdrop.
And this brings my cautious attitude towards ideals of integration full circle. It's actually very clear to me what people mean when they say ''integrate'' - they mean become more like natives, or at least become more like the average native. This is clear, because nobody talks about integration or assimilation when discussing negative outcomes for natives. Do we worry about assimilation for people with speech impediments or for people who speak slang? Indeed, if you start complaining too much about cultural differences based on who speaks slang or not, you're likely to be accused of racism. What about labor market outcomes? Have you ever been told the unemployed or minimum wage workers are not well integrated in society? So, my third problem with ideals of immigrant integration has to do with the ambiguity, or lack thereof, present in most people's definitions of integration. Integration is for the foreign or the children of the foreign, and they need to do it to have a right to live in our society. In Denmark, citizenship is even thought of by politicians as a reward for integration, despite evidence and theory that suggests citizenship can actually facilitate things like better labor market outcomes. That ''ideal'' of integration makes me deeply uncomfortable.
It makes me uncomfortable because integration as a concept can be used to mask and sugar-coat racism. Denmark has outlawed ''ghettos'', defined as communities where more than half of residents are ''non-western'' of origin and that have poor economic outcomes in terms of labor market outcomes, crime outcomes, and\or education outcomes (are native high-school dropouts integrated?). A person born in Denmark who has at least one ''non-western'' parent is considered a non-westerner. Recent Ukrainian refugees are considered westerners. And the justification is integration - Denmark is helping these immigrants by encouraging integration, and apparently Ukrainian refugees are more integrated into Danish society than ''non-westerners'' who grew up in Denmark. Or so I'm told. Not far away, Muslims who own grocery stores in Paris are being forced to sell alcohol and pork, and hijabs are banned - all in the name of integration. Imagine banning hoodies in the name of integration in the U.S., and you'll start to understand why talk of integration makes my stomach turn.
On a more fundamental level, people do have some abstract notion of culture when they speak about integration. They want immigrants to ''be like us.'' The problem with that is ''we'' aren't all the same. And, as Bryan Caplan eloquently puts it, trying to control the trajectory of culture is inherently totalitarian. Why? Culture is other people - what they do, what they wear, how they eat, what they watch, what they listen to, what they complain about. Without other people, you have no culture. Culture represents what a lot of people are doing and how they're interacting. To want to control culture is to want to control other people.
So I think integration is a bullshit concept for several reasons. I think it's a bullshit concept because it's ill defined. I think it's a bullshit concept because it's not something we have to worry about - immigrants have an incentive to ''integrate'', and they do. Most importantly, I think it's a bullshit concept because it's easily used to mask racist and totalitarian tendencies. This is the most important reason I think integration is a bullshit concept, because people with good intentions and objective, scholarly people can be easily allured by conversations revolving around ''helping immigrants integrate successfully in society'' and ''being responsible when designing immigrant policy by providing a pathway to integration''. But such language looks more and more like doublespeak the more and more I think about it. And George Orwell warned me about doublespeak.
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