Exclusion, integration, and democracy

Contemporary states develop ever more sophisticated structures of exclusion vis-à-vis outsiders through complex procedures for access to territory, visas, jobs, public services, asylum, etc., ever stricter border control, border externalization, and so on. Integration, one of the main objectives of immigration policy in most states, can often serve as an instrument of exclusion, for example, when it makes excessive demands of meeting standards of economic productivity, cultural similarity, and political orientation, often only attainable to small groups of immigrants deemed “desirable” by host states. At the same time, can we imagine countering illegitimate exclusion practices without corresponding policies of good integration? After all, formally permissive immigration law is of little use to anyone if admitted outsiders have no way to participate on a par with members of the host society, i.e., if they do not achieve in same way and to some degree a level of integration within said society.

This workshop organized by the Good Integration (GOODINT) Project at the University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway (https://en.uit.no/project/goodint) aims at addressing the problems of exclusion and integration from the viewpoint of political philosophy and political theory.

One day of the 3-day workshop will be dedicated to a symposium with invited speakers on Patti Tamara Lenard’s book Exclusion and Democracy to be published in May 2023 by Oxford University Press. Confirmed commentators:

• Annamari Vitikainen (UiT)
• Eszter Kollar (KU Leuven)
• Andrew Mason (University of Warwick)
• Esma Baycan Herzog (University of Geneva)
• Nils Holtug (University of Copenhagen)

If you have any questions, please contact Zsolt Kapelner ([email protected])