A Democratic Citizenship Conception of Immigrant Integration

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1 A Democratic Citizenship Conception of Immigrant Integration Caleb Yong Caleb Yong McGill University 1. Introduction A conception of justice in immigration policy must answer two broad questions. The first asks what principles should guide and constrain the laws and policies regulating the admission of prospective immigrants. The second asks what principles should guide and constrain the laws and policies regulating the treatment of immigrants once admitted that is, the reception of immigrants. In this paper, my focus will be on this latter question. More specifically, I will examine the familiar demand that reception policies should aim to integrate immigrants into the receiving society. I will begin by reviewing what I take to be the prevailing conception of immigrant integration in the theoretical literature, which I call the nation-building conception. According to this view, immigrants should be encouraged and expected to integrate into the dominant culture of the receiving society, although the dominant culture should also undergo a transformation in order to make it more culturally inclusive, thereby offering fair terms of integration. Although it contains important insights, this conception distorts rather than illuminates the proper ends of integration policies. In particular, the nation-building conception suffers 1

2 from two defects. Firstly, although nation-building theorists are right to characterize integration as a process of mutual or reciprocal adaption between receiving society and immigrant, their focus on cultural adaptation draws attention away from the fundamental aims of integration, and leaves them unable to precisely formulate what fair terms of integration would consist in. Secondly, although nation-building theorists are right to emphasize the importance of fostering social unity among citizens new and old, they misidentify the appropriate basis for social unity in a democratic society. I offer an alternative conception which I call the democratic citizenship conception. On this view, integration is a process of reciprocal adaptation between immigrants and receiving societies, guided by two fundamental aims. Firstly, the aim of social integration seeks to foster social unity and encourage association on terms of equality between citizens, old and new, in all non-private social domains. This will often require adapting existing institutions in order to dismantle barriers to entry arising from religious and cultural difference. Secondly, the aim of civic education seeks to equip immigrants with the skills they need to fully participate in the receiving society as free and equal citizens. This will often require immigrants to learn the common language of the receiving society and its political history and specific institutional procedures; however, the aim is not for immigrants to identify with the dominant culture but instead to acquire certain culturally specific skills that are justifiably linked to the wellfunctioning of the economic, social, and political institutions of their receiving society. 2. The nation-building conception of immigrant integration 2

3 The nation-building conception of immigrant integration has been most extensively articulated by Will Kymlicka and David Miller. 1 I take the term nation-building from Kymlicka, who defines nation-building policies as efforts by modern states to diffuse a single societal culture throughout the whole of its territory. 2 These policies include standardizing the provision of public education in a common official language, offering public services only in the official language, and encouraging convergence on and identification with a common culture. What distinguishes nation-building policies is their aim, which is to promote what Kymlicka calls integration into a common societal culture. 3 Nation-building immigrant reception policies are therefore continuous in their aim with nation-building policies in general: to integrate or incorporate immigrants and others into the national culture. 4 According to the nation-building conception of immigrant integration, then, an overarching aim of immigrant reception policies should be to induct immigrants into the societal or national culture shared by the citizens of the receiving state or sub-state political unit in question. I mention the possibility of sub-state political units because the nation-building conception is compatible with the idea of a multinational state; indeed, Kymlicka is eager to stress how his view departs from the model of a unitary, homogenous nation-state. 5 What the nation-building conception insists on is that integration should consist in the induction of immigrants into the national culture of the society they migrate to, whether the receiving 1 Miller adopts a hybrid view which joins the nation-building conception with elements of the democratic citizenship conception; for the purposes of this article, I will focus on areas where he concurs with Kymlicka. See David Miller, Immigrants, Nations, and Citizenship, Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (2008). 2 Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular, p Miller, Immigrants, Nations, and Citizenship, p Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p

4 society is a national minority within a broader multinational state, or whether that society comprises the entire population of a unitary nation-state. For example, if there is a national culture in Quebec distinct from the national culture of the rest of Canada, then for nationbuilding theorists, immigrant reception policies in that province should aim to induct immigrants into Quebec s national culture. Although the nation-building conception understands integration to be the socialization of immigrants into the larger culture of the receiving society, they emphasize that immigrant integration must be distinguished from cultural assimilation. They mark the conceptual distinction between integration and assimilation in two ways. Firstly, where assimilation involves comprehensive cultural conformity, integration involves cultural convergence only in the public sphere, leaving immigrants free to express cultural difference in the private sphere. Thus, Miller observes that while a national culture embraces certain cultural ideals such as a commitment to preserve the purity of the national language, these ideals are restricted to the public sphere, leaving room for different private cultures within the nation. 6 Because a national culture is restricted to the public sphere, immigrant integration as a process of induction into the national culture is compatible with, and indeed insists on, immigrants freedom to practice and to try to preserve their ancestral cultures within the private sphere. 7 As Kymlicka writes, integration affirms the right of immigrants to maintain their ethnic heritage in the private sphere at home, and in voluntary associations. 8 6 David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p Miller, Immigrants, Nations, and Citizenship, p Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p

5 Secondly, where assimilation achieves cultural convergence through immigrants unilateral adaptation, integration achieves cultural convergence in the public sphere through mutual adaptation by immigrants and the receiving society alike. Miller characterizes this process of mutual adaptation as follows: What must happen in general is that existing national identities must be stripped of elements that are repugnant to the self-understanding of one or more component groups, while members of these groups must themselves be willing to embrace an inclusive nationality, and in the process to shed elements of their values which are at odds with its principles. 9 Similarly, Kymlicka envisions, on the one hand, the transformation of the public institutions of the dominant culture so as to provide some recognition or accommodation of immigrants distinctive private cultures, and on the other hand, the acceptance by immigrants that they will be barred by public policy from re-creating their native national cultures and must instead conform in the public sphere to the national culture of their receiving society. 10 Nation-building theorists ground their dual insistence that immigrants be free in the private sphere to express their distinctive cultures and identities, and that receiving societies adapt the existing national culture so that it becomes more hospitable to immigrants minority cultures and identities in an idea of fairness: indeed, Kymlicka refers to cultural and religious accommodations for immigrants and other multiculturalism policies as devices to ensure fair 9 Miller, On Nationality, p Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p

6 terms of integration. 11 There are two senses in which integration can be said to be fair. The first sense understands fairness to require reciprocity or mutuality between immigrants and receiving society: integration, as distinct from assimilation, is fair because it is a two-way process which requires the mainstream society to adapt itself to immigrants by ensuring that the mainstream culture is hospitable to immigrants. 12 The second sense understands fairness as inter-group equality: integration, as distinct from assimilation, provides the same degrees of respect and accommodation for the cultures of immigrant minorities as it does for the culture of the majority group in the receiving society. 13 Unfortunately for nation-building theorists, neither of these notions of fairness offers plausible and clear guidelines to distinguish integrationist policies from assimilationist policies. Consider first the idea of fairness as inter-group equality. It is clear that the public institutions of a receiving state cannot accommodate minority and majority cultures to the same degree. As nation-building theorists themselves frequently point out, it is simply impractical to have an unrestrained proliferation of official languages, and hence it would be infeasible to extend the same degree of support to every language; since the official languages within a given territory will invariably be the majority languages, it seems impossible to achieve the kind of inter-group equality and hence fairness nation-building theorists have in mind. In response to this problem, nation-building theorists might shift to an interpretation of equal accommodation which requires allocating, not an identical level of support for different cultures, but a level of support that is prorated according to the number of current citizens or 11 Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular, p Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular, p

7 immigrants who identify with each culture. 14 However plausible a principle of equal accommodation as prorated accommodation might be in certain contexts, it cannot justify two main features of the nation-building conception. Specifically, the idea of prorated accommodation does not motivate the central distinction nation-building theorists draw between public and private culture, and does not provide plausible guidance as to which aspects of the national culture should be reshaped. Take the example of language policy. It is doubtful that the cut between majority and minority preferences regarding language aligns neatly with the cut between official support for a common public language and accommodations for minority languages such as public funding for second-language classes in minority languages. In addition, presumably the reshaping of the national culture will not involve changing the national language, but the idea of prorated accommodation does not explain why this aspect of the national culture should be unchanged while others should evolve. Having seen that fairness as inter-group equality does not offer a plausible way to distinguish assimilation from integration, I turn now to fairness as reciprocity. The problem here is that there is no clear standard of reciprocity that immigrant reception policies should be required to satisfy. One criterion might be simply quantitative: perhaps mutual adaptation is fair when both immigrants and existing citizens alike have experienced as much cultural adaptation as each other. But that suggestion seems absurd. Miller has proposed another criterion of reciprocity: beginning with a recognition that immigration typically confers benefits and imposes costs on both the immigrant group and the host society, reciprocity requires that the relevant benefits and burdens be distributed fairly among immigrants and 14 See Alan Patten, Equal Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), p

8 current citizens. 15 However, here reciprocity no longer operates as an independent value as it might in a case of cooperation in production or exchange where parties joint action produces a cooperative surplus. Reciprocity or fairness in this context simply refers to the distribution of the benefits and burdens involved in some process in a way which is appropriately responsive to the valid claims of different parties. What count as valid claims, and which responses to such claims are appropriate, are substantive questions that must receive an independent answer. Faced with these objections, the nation-building theorist might offer a renewed case for her overall model nation-building policies directed at immigrants, combined with accommodations and minority rights which protect immigrants against cultural imposition by appealing to two separate sets of values. On the one hand, she might offer a general justification for nation-building policies by appeal to the value of a citizenry united by a common national culture. For example, Miller points to the importance of social unity, and argues that a shared national culture plays an indispensable role in achieving this unity, which common citizenship alone could not provide. 16 On the other hand, she might appeal to the value of immigrants autonomy in the public sphere: she might argue that if assimilation and comprehensive cultural conformity is not to be imposed on immigrants, then nation-building policies must be tempered by accommodations and other minority rights. Kymlicka gestures at this type of argument when he describes multiculturalism policies as operating to supplement and transform nation-building policies so that the latter are less likely to coercively assimilate immigrants Miller, Immigrants, Nations, and Citizenship, p Miller, Immigrants, Nations, and Citizenship, p Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys, p

9 The success of this alternative argument for the nation-building conception rests on the success of its two component parts: it must be shown that a shared national culture is valuable for achieving social unity and other legitimate social goals, and it must be shown that the tempering of nation-building policies by accommodations and minority rights of the kind envisioned by Kymlicka and Miller is necessary and sufficient to protect immigrants from cultural imposition. Notice, as an initial observation, that the two parts of the argument are in prima facie tension. If promoting a common national culture is a justified and important aim of public policy, then it is unclear what complaint immigrants, or indeed any other citizens, could have against it; hence, it is unclear why nation-building policies require tempering in order to be acceptable. If, by contrast, promoting a common national culture is an unjustified public end, then it is unclear why nation-building policies should be tempered rather than simply abandoned or rolled back. The prospects for this alternative argument therefore also look unpromising, as a more detailed examination of each prong of the argument will confirm. Consider first the claim that nation-building policies are generally justified since when a state acts to diffuse a shared national culture throughout its political membership, it acts to promote valuable social goals. Three benefits of a common national culture are usually cited by nation-building theorists. 18 Firstly, without a shared language, a unified labor market would be difficult to achieve under modern conditions, but absent a unified labor market, equality of opportunity is very unlikely to obtain. Hence diffusing a common language is required in order to implement equality of opportunity. Secondly, without a shared language, political debate in civil society and in public forums would be fragmented; diffusing a common language therefore 18 See the list in Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular, p

10 serves to facilitate democratic deliberation. Thirdly, a shared national culture creates the social unity necessary to motivate citizens to lend their ongoing support to welfare state programs and other policies demanded by distributive justice, and to adopt a deliberative stance when exercising their political rights. 19 The essential contention is therefore that nation-building policies support, or are preconditions for, achieving basic requirements of justice within a state. Notice that there is an important difference between the first two benefits cited and the third. The first two are purely instrumental benefits of widespread proficiency in a common language but a description of two or more persons who are proficient in the same language as sharing a national culture would be unduly inflated. Imagine a Chinese undergraduate who gains proficiency in the French language as a result of enrolling in university courses in Beijing. It would be odd to suppose that this undergraduate is thereby being inducted into French national culture or that she thereby acquires French national identity. Policies which aim to diffuse a common language among the citizens of a state, including policies aimed at ensuring that immigrants gain proficiency in the common language in question, are therefore misleadingly labelled nation-building policies. The goals of such policies can be achieved, and the attendant benefits reaped, without immigrants coming to non-instrumentally value the national culture or to identify with the group associated with that culture. Only the third benefit cited is properly understood as a benefit of a shared national culture. Two or more persons share a national culture, not simply in virtue of being proficient in the same language or having knowledge of particular historical facts, but also in virtue of two further conditions: (1) identifying with that is, seeing themselves as members of the group 19 Miller, On Nationality, pp

11 associated with that culture; and (2) non-instrumentally valuing their group membership. The significance of this subjective attitudinal element is highlighted by Miller s frequent references to national identity rather than simply a national culture: indeed, he stresses that it is because a shared identity carries with it a shared loyalty that a common national identity is able to furnish a basis for social unity and interpersonal trust in a large-scale, impersonal society. 20 Policies which aim for immigrants to develop an identification with the national culture of the receiving society, and to non-instrumentally value their self-conceived membership in the national group, are properly labelled as nation-building policies. The problem here is that attempts to achieve social unity in this way are likely to fail without resort to oppressive forms of cultural imposition. It is a familiar idea in liberal thought that against the background of institutions which protect individual freedoms of conscience, speech, and association, individuals will inevitably come to hold divergent views about what projects, relationships, and memberships are of value. By the same token, different individuals will value, engage with, and identify with or reject, repudiate, and distance themselves from different projects, relationships, and memberships. There seems to be no reason why cultural identities and membership of cultural groups should be an exception to this general fact of reasonable pluralism. 21 Liberal states, therefore, cannot hope to achieve social unity by diffusing a shared national culture or identity, without abridging the very freedoms that make them liberal states. Hence, nation-building policies cannot be justified by the aim of achieving social unity. To put 20 Miller, On Nationality, p See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p

12 the same point another way: it is not social unity tout court that constitutes a legitimate aim of public policy, but social unity founded on an appropriate basis; however, a shared national culture or identity would not be an appropriate basis for social unity in a liberal state. Hence, nationbuilding policies generally lack a sufficient justification, and therefore are also unjustified when applied to immigrants: it is objectionable for states to require or expect immigrants to identify with the national culture or to non-instrumentally value membership in the national cultural group. Indeed, once cultural pluralism is acknowledged to be a part of the reasonable pluralism which characterizes a liberal society, it becomes clear that the idea of a single national culture, or a small number of national cultures within a supposedly multinational state, is illusory. Rather, what is taken to be the national culture will simply be a privileged culture that a predominant section of the population within a given area (are assumed to) identify with and non-instrumentally value. Nation-building policies, therefore, are more properly seen as forms of cultural imposition by members of majority cultures within a state or a sub-state political unit. Since nation-building policies threaten to be projects of cultural imposition and group domination, the case for minority rights and cultural accommodations as protections for immigrants against these policies might seem to be strengthened. But if nation-building policies are illiberal forms of cultural imposition, it is unclear why they should be only constrained rather than abolished altogether. The familiar reply is that nation-building is unavoidable: this is typically expressed as the claim that complete cultural neutrality in public policy is 12

13 infeasible. 22 Indeed, the infeasibility of cultural neutrality is also often supposed to undermine the argument, which I canvassed above, that nation-building policies constitute an objectionable form of cultural imposition. To assess this reply, we must scrutinize the claim that the diffusion of a shared national culture through law and policy is an unavoidable feature of liberal societies. In support of this claim, nation-building theorists appeal to a number of policies that are ubiquitous in liberal democratic states, noting how these policies inevitably have a significant impact on the flourishing of some cultures rather than others. Two such policies are most commonly mentioned: first, the selection of certain languages as official languages, to be used as the language of instruction in schools, and as the medium of communication in government, in the courts, in public administration, and in the provision of public services; second, the designation of specific days as public holidays, where the days selected coincide with the holy days of particular religions traditions. Since public policy cannot avoid choosing particular official languages and official public holidays, and since such official selections will very likely have a significant impact on the flourishing or otherwise of different cultures, there is no cultural neutrality to be had. Nation-building policies can at most be constrained rather than abolished. However, as we have already seen, it is misleading to describe official language policies as necessarily aimed at nation-building, understood as the cultivation of a common national identity among all citizens. In encouraging proficiency in a common language throughout its citizenry, a liberal state could simply be acting to lower transaction costs for its citizens 22 See Miller, On Nationality, p. 137; Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, pp ; Kymclika, Politics in the Vernacular, pp. 24-6; Joseph H. Carens, Culture, Citizenship, and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp

14 whatever culture they might identify with when they interact within the economy, civil society, and in the political sphere. In the absence of official language policies, the languages spoken among citizens are likely to proliferate, imposing a level of transaction costs on citizento-citizen interactions that threaten to critically undermine the cooperation among them needed to sustain a liberal state s basic institutions. A similar analysis can be applied to the case of public holidays. In the first place, it is not strictly infeasible for public holidays to be scheduled so as not to coincide with religious holy days. It is not unavoidable but undesirable for public holidays to be scheduled in ways which disrupt and burden citizens religious practices: the point of designating public holidays is partly to secure for citizens time away from paid work in order to pursue those projects, relationships, and memberships that fall outside of their employment, including religious commitments. It is also undesirable to abolish common public holidays in favor of entitlements to time away from paid work fully customized to individual choice, since another function of public holidays is to coordinate citizens leisure time, given that many personal ends most obviously relationships and associational memberships are pursued in common with like-minded others. In scheduling public holidays to track majority preferences, states need not aim at the diffusion of a shared national culture or identity, but only at facilitating citizens pursuit of activities outside of paid work. More general, it is true that states cannot achieve cultural neutrality when that principle is understood to require neutrality of effect. But when cultural neutrality is more plausibly understood to require neutrality of aim, we can see that it is perfectly feasible. 23 But if policies 23 On this distinction, see Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp

15 which aim at inducting citizens into a specific national culture and identity are in fact avoidable, and if such policies amount to an objectionable form of cultural imposition, then nationbuilding policies should not simply be constrained by accommodations for minority cultures, but should be abolished entirely. The nation-building conception of immigrant integration, therefore, is indefensible and cannot offer appropriate guidance for the immigrant reception policies of a democratic society. In the next section, I lay out an alternative conception which does not focus on getting immigrants to share a common culture and identity with current citizens. Rather, my proposed conception focuses directly on the idea of democratic citizenship: for an immigrant to integrate, on this view, is for her to take her place as a citizen among citizens of a democratic society. Integration as a democratic citizen, my account will explain, is both an entitlement and an obligation for immigrants. 3. The democratic citizenship conception of immigrant integration The fundamental idea of the democratic citizenship conception is that immigrant reception policies should treat immigrants as proto-citizens: specifically, as incipient citizens of the particular democratic society they have been admitted to. For the purposes of this article, I will adopt, without argument, the following conception of a democratic society: a democratic society is a society of equals joined together by shared participation in a common scheme of social and political cooperation that ensures the preconditions for the freedom of each. As persons joined together for the sake of protecting and promoting each other s freedom, each citizen of such a society is to be guaranteed certain basic rights, liberties, opportunities, and 15

16 material goods, without which she could not meaningfully set and pursue personal and associational ends. Because citizens of a democratic society are equals, they are not only to share in these benefits of society on equal terms, but also to share in the work of shaping, upholding, and reproducing the basic institutions of their society on equal non-hierarchical, nondominating terms. To say that immigrants should integrate, then, is to say that they should come to fully participate as free and equal citizens in the specific democratic society they have been admitted to. Immigrant integration policies should aim to facilitate immigrants integration in this sense, by helping them to develop the capacities the knowledge, skills and motivations they must have if they are to fully participate as citizens in their receiving society, and to live together with other citizens in freedom, as equals. Understood in this way, immigrant integration policies should have two, closely intertwined, aims: the civic education of immigrants, and their social integration with current citizens in all non-private domains. The rest of this section will be devoted to further discussion of these dual aims of immigrant integration policies. Consider first the civic education of immigrants, that is, their education for citizenship in the particular democratic society they have been admitted to. Many, although of course not all, adult immigrants will already have received some formal education in their countries of origin. It is therefore important to distinguish the purposes of civic education, as distinct from other forms of education. As a general statement, we can say that civic education aims, firstly, to equip immigrants with the knowledge and skills they need to participate fully in the common life of their receiving society; and secondly, to inculcate in immigrants the attitudes, 16

17 dispositions, and motivations that together constitute the civic virtue or sense of justice appropriate for a citizen of a democratic society. Among the knowledge and skills that civic education will seek to impart are proficiency in the common language or languages of the receiving society, a working knowledge of the constitution, the political system, and the economic system, and a basic understanding of the history of the society. Proficiency in the common language is necessary for an immigrant to fully participate in democratic deliberation, to effectively exercise her basic rights and freedoms, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association, and to access a wide range of opportunities in the economy and labor market. Notice here the important difference in the way the democratic citizenship conception construes the significance of diffusing the receiving society s official language among the immigrant population: such policies are components of providing immigrants with an education for citizenship, not attempts to induct them into any particular culture or identity. Similarly, knowledge of the political process and of the receiving society s history is important for the democratic citizenship conception not as aspects of a program of cultural induction, but because such knowledge helps equip immigrants to participate in democratic deliberation, by giving them essential tools to critically assess existing and proposed laws and policies, and indeed to effectively formulate proposals of their own. Familiarity with the essentials of the constitution and the political system is also important because it makes immigrants aware of the rights they are or will be entitled to as citizens, and of the ways that they can call on social protection for their rights and freedoms, including their freedom from oppressive associations and relationships, and their rights against invidious discrimination. 17

18 Notice that, since citizenship in a democratic society involves sharing in political rule, it is in an important sense an office which the officeholder has an obligation to responsibly exercise. For this reason, immigrants have a duty to conscientiously acquire the abovementioned skills and knowledge required for the effective and responsible exercise of citizenship. Thus, the democratic citizenship conception can justify imposing on immigrants a duty to learn the official language and to acquire a basic understanding of the political process and history of the receiving society. This is another dimension on which my proposed conception of immigrant integration does better than the nation-building conception. Although nation-building theorists have been able to show why immigrants have strong incentives to learn the national language and to otherwise integrate into the national culture, they have struggled have struggled to justify a normative requirement that immigrants do so. The democratic citizenship conception provides the answer. To the extent that immigrants are immigrants to a democratic society rather than metics or colonists, they aspire to the standing and office of democratic citizenship in the receiving society. But citizenship in a democratic society involves sharing in political rule, and political power must be exercised in accordance with certain standards. Immigrants cannot meet these standards unless they acquire the knowledge and skills required to participate responsibly in democratic deliberation. Hence, the democratic citizenship conception furnishes an account of why immigrants can be expected to learn their receiving society s official language. The democratic citizenship conception is not without its own problems, however. To appreciate one of these problems, observe that the knowledge and skills that immigrants need to participate fully in the common life of their receiving society go far beyond the familiar 18

19 examples cited above. In fact, to some extent programs of civic education overlap with more general programs of education. For example, basic knowledge of a society s history and its political system is not, on its own, sufficient to critically assess laws and policies. For that, a grasp of a wide range of relevant information, as well as properly developed critical faculties, are also needed. Similarly, proficiency in the common language is not sufficient to have access to a wide range of opportunities in the labor market let alone to achieve equality of opportunity with current citizens. If they are to be participants on equal terms in the economy, immigrants must have a broad range of skills which are in demand by potential employers, and indeed a comparable range of skills to current citizens. These observations raise an important problem for the integration of adult immigrants. In order to fully achieve the goals of civic education, a receiving society would have to make available courses of instruction and other learning opportunities comparable to those made available to non-immigrant minor children. Moreover, in order to comply with their duty to suitably prepare themselves to assume the office of democratic citizen, many immigrants would have to devote significant time and effort to these educational opportunities. Fully educating immigrants for democratic citizenship might seem to be an excessively demanding exercise, both for receiving societies and immigrants themselves. This problem is compounded when we turn our attention to the inculcation of a sense of justice. Eamonn Callan acutely describes this complex cluster of motivations, dispositions and attitudes, and the importance of instilling them in proto-citizens when he writes: 19

20 Future citizens need to develop some imaginative sympathy for compatriots whose experience and identity incline them to see political questions in ways that differ systematically from their own. A respect for reasonable differences and a concomitant spirit of moderation and compromise has to be nurtured. A vivid awareness of the responsibilities that the rights of others impose on the self, as well as a sense of the dignity that one s own rights secure for the self, must be engendered. 24 To this list of the civic virtues which comprise the sense of justice we might add dispositions to mutual understanding, mutual respect, and a willingness to cooperate on fair terms. This aspect of civic education again threatens to be excessively demanding. Unlike imparting proficiency in a language or knowledge of a particular political system, it is difficult and perhaps impossible to instill a sense of justice through direct instruction. When theorists of civic education envision the inculcation of a sense of justice in minor children, they typically propose indirect strategies by which children are gradually socialized into adopting the relevant attitudes and dispositions. Callan speaks of schools having a hidden curriculum : children learn tolerance and mutual respect through the experience of years of interaction with other students who embody the diversity characteristic of a liberal society, within an environment in which respectful and tolerant behavior is enforced. 25 To inculcate a sense of justice as to fully impart the skills and knowledge required for citizenship it seems that immigrants might have to undergo a very extensive and burdensome process of adult education and socialization. This is certainly a serious challenge for the democratic citizenship view, one which I cannot fully answer here beyond making the following two points. Firstly, the importance of 24 Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p Eamonn Callan, Common Schools for Common Education, Canadian Journal of Education 20 (1995). 20

21 civic education for immigrants might indeed justify making available to immigrants extensive adult education opportunities beyond the language and citizenship classes familiar from the current practice of democratic societies. Secondly, the experiential aspect of developing an appropriate sense of justice for democratic citizenship provides an important justification for the second main goal of immigrant integration policies, social integration. To clarify what this second aim of immigrant integration involves, consider the following picture of what a society that is socially integrated looks like, which I adapt from Elizabeth Anderson s account of a racially integrated society: such a society is characterized by the full inclusion and participation as equals of members of all [groups] in all social domains, especially in the main institutions of society that define its opportunities for recognition, educational and economic advancement, access to public goods, and political influence. 26 A socially integrated society, then, is one in which all citizens, whatever their group membership or cultural identity, freely associate on non-hierarchical terms in schools and universities, in the economy, in civil society, and in the public realm. Policies promoting social integration will therefore have two goals. Firstly, they will seek to dismantle any barriers to association in each social domain, thereby overcoming associational segregation. Secondly, to dismantle any inter-group hierarchies that exist in each social domain, thereby overcoming role segregation. To be clear, role segregation does not arise simply in virtue of the existence of relations of command and compliance, since many such hierarchies are not objectionable for example, they may simply be features of an efficient 26 Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp

22 division of labor. The objectionable hierarchies which role segregation consists in are those which track group membership or identity, with outsider groups such as immigrants relegated to subordinate positions and insider groups hoarding positions of authority and privilege. I offer four arguments for the importance of social integration, focusing on integration between immigrants and citizens. The first I have already gestured at: when associational segregation and role segregation are overcome in universities, workplaces, and civil society organizations, these social domains become schools for civic virtue, not only for immigrants but also for current citizens. When citizens and immigrants interact on terms of equality in these social spaces, they acquire imaginative sympathy for each other, develop trust for each other, and learn to interact on terms of mutual respect. This benefit of social integration closely relates to another, which provides the second argument for social integration: it fosters social unity on a basis appropriate for a democratic society. A familiar worry that nation-building theorists cite in doubting the adequacy of shared citizenship as a basis for social unity is the supposedly abstract and cerebral quality of democratic citizenship, understood simply as the common affirmation of principles of liberal justice. 27 But shared citizenship in a democratic society can furnish a basis for social unity not simply through citizens common affirmation of certain basic political values and principles. Social unity might further rest on citizens (and immigrants ) sense of justice their motivation to give justice to each other by working to reform and reproduce their common social and political institutions which as noted above, social integration helps to instill. 27 See Miller, On Nationality, p

23 Another benefit of social integration is its contribution to improving the epistemic quality of democratic deliberation. If citizens and immigrants live separate lives across the spectrum of social domains, it is unlikely that they will come to understand and appreciate each other s needs and interests, and each other s perspectives on how to tackle social problems. If citizens and immigrants are not associationally segregated, but nonetheless interact on hierarchical terms likely with immigrants occupying subordinate roles then the interests and perspectives of immigrants are likely to be dismissed and marginalized in political debate. The presence of either associational or role segregation therefore threatens to severely impair democratic deliberation. These three arguments for social integration are indirect. The fourth is more direct: many, although admittedly not all, forms of associational and role segregation are in themselves unjust. Most obviously, it is unjust when immigrants cannot access opportunities in education and employment due to invidious discrimination or to inadequate provision of earlier opportunities that unfairly prevents them from effectively competing for these opportunities. It is similarly unjust when immigrants are unable to effectively participate in political debate, for example when they are marginalized from mainstream platforms of the mass media. Nevertheless, I should emphasize that the first three, indirect, arguments for social integration as an aspect of immigrant integration policies are crucial, since not all barriers to the entry of immigrants to specific educational and employment opportunities are in themselves unjust violations of equality of opportunity. Consider in particular cases where schools and universities allow admission, or employers select and retain employees, based on criteria that are generally justified but which place special burdens on individuals who engage in minority 23

24 cultural practices. The application of such criteria arguably does not contravene equality of opportunity, since the criteria of selection or admission are ex hypothesi generally relevant and justified. The application of such criteria also does not violate the basic rights of minority individuals, since what they prevent is the combination of continuing their cultural or religious practice with accessing a particular opportunity: there is no direct restriction on religion or culture. It is here that social integration provides an important argument for religious and cultural accommodations: such accommodations serve precisely to encourage immigrant minorities not to withdraw from education, the economy, and civil society by permitting the combination that, absent the accommodation, would be unavailable. 24