Refusal to integrate

Currently, the accusation of “refusal to integrate from above” is occasionally levelled against politicians and civil servants who, through restrictive regulations and measures, illegally make it more difficult for people already residing in the country to integrate.

Integration means "inclusion," "admission into a community of equals," and is thus always a bilateral process of rapprochement involving two sides, which can therefore fail on both sides, for example, due to mutual mistrust. What it euphemistically disguises is the hidden expectation that the foreigner should adapt, subordinate themselves, or even submit—a demand that cannot be expressed explicitly, however, since it would not be integration at all, but rather the creation of a power relationship based on permanent inequality.

Refusal to integrate “from below”

If people with a migration background are classified as refusing to integrate, their adherence to the traditions and cultural assets of their country of origin is not interpreted as an exercise of constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, but rather as an expression of defiance or a lack of education.

In the German-speaking world, the term was used, among other things, in the discourse surrounding the integration courses introduced in 2004. It also played a role in the headscarf controversy.

History

In the 1750s, Benjamin Franklin accused the German immigrants to Pennsylvania of refusing to integrate because they stubbornly clung to their religious beliefs and customs, appeared culturally backward, and refused to attend English-language schools. He asked "Why should the Palatine (=Pfälzer) boors be suffer'd to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together, establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours?". In this context, the Pennsylvania Committee for German Affairs demanded a ban on the German-language press and the use of German in schools and offices, and advocated for forced marriages with Anglo-Americans, a proposal which Franklin, however, rejected. Since the wave of immigration to the US from 1848 to 1855, Catholics (Southern Germans, Austrians, Irish, Mexicans) in particular were considered backward and refused to integrate. Later, criticism was directed against the Chinese immigrants' lack of willingness to integrate and the braids they wore as a symbol of their refusal to integrate. These braids were often forcibly cut off in San Francisco in the 1870s. Since the 1880s and 1890s, language tests have been increasingly demanded to enforce the integration of immigrants.

Criticism

The scientific side has objected to the original use of the term, arguing that a “basic insight of migration research” has not yet been accepted in Germany, “according to which migrants always form communities, use networks and also develop ‘parallel societies’, especially when they are rejected".