Integration Exams and the Borderlands of Belonging

The borderland is an indeterminate region within which the inclusions, exclusions, and identities defined by the physical border are negotiated by individuals living within that space. Theories of borderlands work to destabilize borders as rigid, securitized, state-driven boundaries and illuminate the multiplicity of identities that can arise through living in and across the border. Further, borderwork, that is the marking, dismantling, and shifting of borders, is not the sole purview of the state (Rumford, 2013), but rather is made and re-made anew through the daily interactions of those living in the borderland. This paper draws from these insights and seeks to disrupt the divisions between insider and outsider, citizen and non-citizen by approaching the naturalization process as a kind of non-territorial borderland. It first considers the introduction of new requirements for naturalization that are designed to stimulate the “right” kinds of feelings of belonging among new citizens in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Drawing on the preliminary results from the first wave of longitudinal interviews with immigrants in Canada, this paper proceeds to address the effect of these policy changes on identity formation. If naturalization is promoted as a transformative process, how and into what does it transform immigrants? What feelings do integration exams stimulate in immigrants as the live in and move through the borderlands of belonging? Who do these practices of bordering exclude from belonging?