What Do We Mean by Integration?

This post was originally an article in issue 8 of Greater Govanhill Magazine by Jack Howes.

With the magazine’s permission we have published it on our website as it encapsulates what integration means to us as a network, and why the term is in our name. You can read the original post on the Greater Govanhill website here.

For some, ‘integration’ is a buzzword in the worst sense – it is too politically-charged and an unhelpful way of thinking about multicultural Glasgow. For others, integration is a really valuable and community-building term defining a responsibility we all share.

Illustration by Kate Benzies

Someone whose job it is to think through these definitions is Alison Phipps, the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. She says its meaning is dependent on use: “When I hear it, I have to stop and do a bit of work with my linguistic scalpel and scrape it around to see which version of integration we are hearing. Are we talking about service delivery? Are we talking about community work? Are we talking about community development? Are we talking about intercultural encounters and intercultural dialogue as part of peace-building in society? Or are we talking about racist assimilation? It will depend on who's speaking and using the term as to which it is.”

She doesn’t hold truck with those who don’t like the term because of perceived negative perceptions: “I think it is a term used by different people in different ways and that makes it slippery. That makes it a term not to be trusted. And it makes it a term that is extremely useful.”

Often the word is used to mean assimilation, and while Alison agrees it would be good to have a term that didn’t have those connotations, she says it is not the word that is the problem: “What I have seen happen time and again, in these debates when there are racist tropes, is whatever term we use for the process of people coming together from different backgrounds to create a different society can be flipped to become a term that then will mean assimilation. In other words, the dominant group is saying to a nondominant group, ‘we want you to be just like us, but in ways which mean that you never can be like us, therefore we can always be down on you’. That's the problematic element with any term. We might use assimilation. We might use integration. We could use bananas if we all agreed that that's what it meant. That's how language works – it’s arbitrary.”

So where can we see integration within our community and social systems? We see it when health, housing and education services offer language and cultural support, at community workshops where people share stories about their culture’s cuisine, and at art and activism events where community leaders reflect the cultural diversity of the area. We also see it in more day-to-day interactions between neighbours in a close.

Integration has mostly been used in relation to migrant and asylum-seeker communities. But ideas of integration apply to all – it is a communal responsibility to intentionally integrate and do it in a dynamic way. Community is ever-changing, so integration should be too.

Savan Qadir, project manager at Refugees for Justice says he likes the word. To him: “The word integration means to integrate with something else. It also means adjusting to differences you may interact with. Integration is an ongoing process, it cannot be done in one go, it is a constant process that is ongoing and developing in time.”

“The responsibility is for the host and the group who is trying to integrate with the host. For example, refugees integrate with the community they are living in, it is the role and responsibility of the host community and the refugee group to integrate with each other and build a community.”

Alison finds the word can work better when clarified with a preceding qualifier such as ‘decolonising integration’ or ‘restorative integration’. The latter term was introduced by Alison’s colleague, Hyab Yohannes, to mean: “a decolonial process of re-building the unfinished project of humanity that was interrupted by colonisation and coloniality."

It’s also important to recognise that societal systems are full of prejudices and biases that actively stymie integration. Take, for example, incarceration in prisons and immigration detention centres; real-life physical segregators that disproportionately affect ethnic minority communities. Or the government cuts to English language provision funding, meaning people don’t have the opportunity to learn. These policies form part of a larger culture war against immigrant communities and the creation of a ‘hostile environment’. The latest government doesn’t look poised to make any positive changes in this area.

So what can we do here in Govanhill? Community integration is the work of meeting, of sharing, of telling stories. It is not just on government bodies, services, dedicated groups or new arrivals. We should all campaign for change and better integration within these systems. It means restoring dignity to service delivery and actions, and intentionally building community in a way that is sustained long beyond initial hospitality, and accepting all the challenges that come with that.