CFP: 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.We invite submissions discussing questions of exclusion, integration and democracy broadly construed. Such questions may include, but are not restricted to the following:

• How can we think of inclusion and integration in a world of increasingly complex forms of exclusion?
• What are legitimate forms of exclusion and legitimate demands of integration in a democratic society today?
• Do systems of exclusion created by contemporary states give rise to structural injustice in the international migration regime, and if so, how is it to be countered?
• How do demands of integration differ between different immigrant groups, e.g., refugees and economic immigrants?
• What does integration require from members of receiving states? How can we best understand integration as a two-way process?
• How can other research areas, e.g., racial justice or indigenous rights, inform our understanding of integration in the case of immigration?

If you would like to contribute to the workshop with a presentation, please send an abstract of 500 words, prepared for blind review, by 31 December to [email protected]. Please include your name and affiliation in the body of the email.

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:

• Sarah Fine (Cambridge)
• Andreas Føllesdal (UiO)
• 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])