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The Civic Turn of Immigrant Integration Policies in the Scandinavian Welfare States

This special issue addresses the question of how to understand the civic turn within immigrant integration in the West towards programs and instruments, public discourses and political intentions, which aim to condition, incentivize, and shape through socialization immigrants into ‘citizens’. With an empirical focus on the less studied Scandinavian cases of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, it provides discussion and critical assessment of the (liberal) convergence thesis and its descriptive and explanatory claims. Contributions cover three policy areas outside the naturalization trajectory:  labour market activation, family reunification and the school, and also address the question whether civic integration policy actually works.

Edited by: Karin Borevi, Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen and Per Mouritsen

  1. Family migration policy, once basing citizens and resident foreigners’ possibilities to bring in foreign family members mainly on the right to family life, is increasingly a tool states use to limit immigratio...

    Authors: Emily Cochran Bech, Karin Borevi and Per Mouritsen
    Citation: Comparative Migration Studies 2017 5:7
  2. The civic integrationist turn usually refers to the stricter requirements for residence and citizenship that many states have implemented since the late 1990’s. But what of other policy spheres that are essent...

    Authors: Christian Fernández and Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen
    Citation: Comparative Migration Studies 2017 5:5
  3. Immigrants’ access to citizenship in their country of residence is increasingly debated in Western democracies. It is an underlying premise of these debates that citizenship and national belonging are closely ...

    Authors: Kristina Bakkær Simonsen
    Citation: Comparative Migration Studies 2017 5:3