Conditional belonging A legal-philosophical inquiry into integration requirements for immigrants in Europe

This dissertation is dedicated to understanding and evaluating the proliferation of integration requirements for third country nationals (TCNs) in EU Member States over the last two decades (i.e. 1998-2017). It examines the relationship and potential tensions between the proclaimed commitment of EU states to the core liberal-democratic values of the EU (democracy, rule of law, equality, respect for human rights, etc.) and their actual integration laws and practices. It describes how integration requirements for TCNs as conditions for attaining increased rights (i.e. family migration, permanent residency and citizenship) in EU countries are increasingly legally misunderstood, misused and predisposed to have counterproductive societal outcomes, often contradicting their formal policy objectives. In addition, the dissertation contends that integration requirements in EU countries reinforce problematic status hierarchies between citizens. In particular, they nurture the social perception that the entitlement of citizens with (non-EU, non-Western) immigrant backgrounds to their legal citizenship is conditional and contingent on certain desirable competences, attitudes and efforts, while citizens without immigrant backgrounds are perceived as having a natural right to the legal status of unconditional citizenship. As a solution, the dissertation argues that integration requirements are permissible if there exists an institutional ‘firewall’ between, on the one hand, laws that regulate the residential rights and naturalization of refugees and family migrants and, on the other hand, public strategies and policy schemes that promote integration.