Integration is at the core of substantive evolutions ranging from the management of immigration to the EU to the access to States’ citizenship. It is taken for granted, notably when connected with employment or put forward, unilaterally or in a contractual approach (i.e. Italian accordo d’integrazione and French contrat d’intégration), as a necessary condition of immigrants’ permanent residence. Integration has hence come to be a component of EU identity as far as TCNs are concerned. In fact, the ethnography shows that it conditions prospective and actual immigrants’ legal strategies, as well as their sense-making of their (planned) presence as immigrants, as Muslims or as entrepreneurs/workforce. Not only do they operate the interplay of immigration, integration and employment requirements in immigration, residence or citizenship procedures but also in everyday life. Yet, no common definition exists and ‘integration’ is not a legal term.
Consequently, critical normative implications need to be ascertained, especially at a time when the economic crisis and questions about the very existence of the EU continuously shuffle immigrant social and legal identity cards on one hand, their relationship to the EU/States on the other.
Carrera (2008: 8) identifies the normativity of integration when “alluding to concepts, approaches and structures addressing the integration of TCNs in immigration and nationality law/ policy”. He limits however his analyses to the set of institutional and substantial mechanisms transforming the role of the States within the EU legal regime. Moving further to Carrera, I argue that this normative process directly hinges on the combination of EU legal provisions and administrative techniques with immigrants’ practices and the (meta-)narratives about immigrant workers, Muslim religion and unauthorized immigrants (commonly conflated with North African/Moroccan immigration in Italy). The paper addresses two aspects. First, ethno-professional framings – which initially aim at managing (work) immigration to the EU – influence notions of membership and are becoming a norm of identity for immigrants (personhood). Second, these techniques have resulted in a fragile bond between TCNs and the EU, hence dismissing the initial purpose of EU integration policy. The paper relies on an interdisciplinary legal analysis including the examination of the relevant provisions, a praxiological approach to individuals’ practices and representations, and the literature on legal socialization and identity building (Kourislky, Silbey).
The paper aims at offering insights into the effectiveness of EU identity as expressed in immigrant integration standards and the processes of diffusion and implementation of multi-sited legal/normative standards by TCNs.
