Conclusion: building a new research agenda
This issue (Crul et al.) is focusing on the relatively new reality of majority minority neighborhoods and cities to which all people, both with and without a migration background, have to position themselves. People without a migration background have usually been considered to be integrated members of society by the mere fact that they belong to the category without migration background. It is, for instance, seldomly considered problematic that many who live in an ethnically diverse context primarily interact with people without migration background. At the same time, we see that people without migration background in a union with someone with a migration background are adapting to other cultural norms and values and are mostly immersed in an ethnically diverse network. These practices show that the one-directional way of looking at integration and assimilation solely as a matter of those with a migration background obscures important process of change for people without migration background living in an ethnically diverse context.
On a more abstract level it is also problematic when the people without migration background are considered to be fully connected to society, even when they do not have meaningful contact with people with a migration background in this diverse context they are living in. The implicit message is that the relationship with people with a migration background is not really a constituting or important part of being part of society. It also obscures the element of privilege and power.
The people without migration background have been largely depicted as the non-mobile group unaffected by mobility and transnationalism. Our approach also criticizes this narrowly defined perspective. First of all, many have been mobile people themselves, either within the country or when temporarily living abroad. These experiences, as we will see in this special issue, also have an important impact on how people experience diversity, and they impact both their attitudes and practices. It potentially affects their partner choice, social circles, their business relationships and even their feelings of belonging. Also, many of our respondents are connected to people born elsewhere or who are non-nationals. They potentially experience the national identity as restrictive and can experience restrictive migration laws as something hindering their personal life. The dominant national discourse of differentiating people with a migrant background and non-nationals collides more and more with the way people in cosmopolitan cities live, as we could especially read in London’s overwhelming remain vote in the Brexit referendum.
Our critique on the core idea of an existing mainstream in which only migrants and their descendants need to integrate or assimilate is very close to the critique of Luhmann and Bommes in relation to their social system theory (Boswell and D’Amato) and that of Schinkel who talks about the dispensation of integration for the group without migration background. Like them, we argue that there is not a place outside society where people with a migration background are in the waiting room to only be accepted in mainstream society over time. All people, those with and without migration background alike, are connected to social systems like neighborhoods, schools or the workplace. We reject therefor a view which automatically puts one group already in society and only asks from the group with a migration background actions and an effort to become part of society. We argue that by changing the scope to integrating into a diverse city context, everybody, both people with and without a migration background, need to make an effort to be part of the ethnically diverse city society, which is their common reality. Some will, however, self-segregate while others will engage with the diversity around them. This new way of thinking opens up new avenues of research in which we can assess in what way people with and without migration background have adapted to the new demographic reality of the city. We can assess which consequences this has for feelings of being a minority or feelings of belonging in the superdiverse neighborhood in which people live, and, also, which consequences this has, for instance, for their socio-economic position.
Voor meer informatie over dit project zie BAM (Becoming a Minority)
Source: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2023, VOL 49, NO. 8