Balance 2002 – 2012

By Christoph Hauschild

Let me start with a personal remark:

Today – with this conference – a circle is closing to me:

It was during the previous Danish presidency in the year 2002 that for the first

time in my professional career I got in touch with the issue of immigrant

integration. In October 2002 the Danish Presidency had invited the Minister of

the Interior to attend a ministerial meeting on integration issues in Copenhagen.

At that time there was not yet a special unit for immigrant integration in the

ministry. The choise fell on me for writing the speaking note. In 2002 this was as

well a start for me. Beginning of next month I will change my position in the

ministry and I will move to a completely different field of activity. So this 2012

conference under Danish presidency will put an end to my work on immigrant

integration.

For that reason please allow me to draw a short balance:

At national level we witnessed a paradigmatic change on how we look at the

integration issue. I think this is true not only for Germany but for several

European countries. Let me therefore refer to little booklet called “The

Government’s Vision and Strategies for Improved Integration” edited by the

Danish Government in June 2003.

Two points mentioned in that policy programme were very much relevant to our

thinking and policy making with regard to immigrant integration in the last ten

years:

Firstly, strengthening the link between immigration policy and integration

policy.

Secondly, putting the focus on individual needs independent from the national,

ethnic or religious background. The 2003 Danish Government paper says in this

respect we must base integration on the individual’s resources and responsibility

and that one has to move away from the clientification of immigrants arriving in

the country. “It is not a social occurrence to arrive in Denmark”

At the European level we started a learning process in 2002. But what we

witnessed is what we call in German “Europaeisierung” – Europanisation of

that policy field reflected in a new European competence in the Treaty of

Lisbon. I had the priviledge of having been involved in every step of it including

the drafting of the Treaty provision. Starting in 2004 in Groningen I assisted to

all ministerial ministerial EU meetings on integration.

Making European policies practical

The idea of designing integration modules came-up when it became clear that

the Commission would put an end to the so-called handbook exercise. Through

the handbook seminars - which were organized by the Member States

themselves - we were able to put the European learning process into practice.

The turned out to be very useful for getting to know the different national

approaches. However, we made as well the experience that although touching a

lot of different issues, we didn’t achieve to be able to deal with those issues in

detail. But when you are in charge if designing a new policy programme or when

you are asked to improve existing programmes you are expected to present

technical solutions. Take the example of language programmes: you have to

take a decion on who is the target group, on how to organize the access to

courses, on how to control the outcome etc.

So the aim attached to the modules was to deepen that European learning

process and making it more practical. The draft modules reflect that initial

purpose. However, from my point of view and I repeat here what I said before in

other meetings a mistake was made with regard to the involvement of Member

States. The whole process of developing the modules was out-sourced to a

consulting company with too little involvement of the Member States. The

challenge is now to transform those modules into a tool box for Member States.

From an institutional point it would be crucial that Member States are much

more part of the process than before. This, however, requires on the side of the

Member States to be available for an active involvement. The European Union

almost doubled in size within the last ten years. The question is should all of

them be involved or should those Member States which have a particular

interest in the issue be permitted to go ahead. The best would be to have every

Member State on board, actually because I don’t see any Member State who

shouldn’t be concerned. My advice would be therefore to have an open debate

on this in the framework of the National Contact Points and to move on on the

basis of that discussion.

Let me add a general observation: The module exercise illustrates again that in

policy making you have to be always aware of the fact that procedures matter.

Integration debate

Part of the balance of the last ten years is that we never talked about what we

understand under the term of integration. There has been always the risk that

we use the same word of latin origin, but in our national languages we attach

different meanings to it. In some countries only newcomers are referred to when

there is a debate on immigrant integration in other countries we see a much

more extensive use. Actually and that also happened within the last decade in

Germany, the term persons with a migratory background was invented by our

national statistical office. The definition of that statistical category is so far

reaching that persons who have never thought about it in their previous life are

confronted now with the fact that they have become a target group of

integration policies.

Conclusion: social trust

This leads me to my final observation: Maybe we do not need at the European

level a common definition of the term integration, but part of the European

debate should be the issue on the impact of migration on social cohesion. I say

this because we have currently two conflicting findings in research on that

issue. Some say that immigration is automatically contributing to the cultural

richness and that this new diversity is strengthening our societies. A very recent

study base on interviews with 10.000 persons on the impact of ethnic diversity

on social trust is much more cautious on this aspect. According to the head of

the project team Ruud Koopmans who is a Dutch professor working in Berlin

the empirical evidence study shows that immigration does have indeed an

impact on social trust. He says that there is already a negative impact on social

trust when the ethnic diversity in a certain neighborhood becomes a pubic

issue.

Let me therefore conclude: We should surely go on in developing European

tools, but at the same time we need a debate in the impact of our work.