The thesis revolves around the transformation of liberal citizenship to a higher degree of conditionality in the face of pluralist challenges revolving around achieving a shared common good. John Rawls’ Political Liberalism serves as the theoretical foundation for the argumentative analysis conducted, utilizing specific civic integration policies of Sweden and Denmark. The normative policy analysis reveals that the “civic integrationist turn” in itself is largely compatible with Rawls’ liberal principles of justice and equality. However, the problematic component lies in the de facto implementation of those measures which can have exclusionary and discriminatory effects i.e. the formulation of citizenship test questions and the portrayal of particular comprehensive doctrines of minority groups as incompatible with national liberal values. The most substantial challenge for a liberal pluralist society remains achieving “overlapping consensus” in the political sphere and guaranteeing safeguards for citizen’s personal comprehensive doctrines in the private sphere.

The Master thesis "Civic Integration of Immigrants in France between 2002-2012" deals with a new integration model of civic integration which the European immigration countries have begun to enforce since the turn of the millennium. An interesting feature of this model is that it is employed by countries whose approch to the integration of immigrants significantly differed till the end of the 20th century. The goal of the thesis is to discover what character shows the civic integration as a new integration model of immigrants in Europe in the integration policies applied in France between 2002-2012. The main hypothesis is based on the theory of the return of assimilation. Its author R. Brubaker claims that in the current integration policies of (not only) European states, the assimilationist tendencies return - however, not in the original concept of assimilation, but in a new transformed concept in between assimilation and multiculturalism. The thesis applies this theory conclusion to the contemporary civic integration policies, so the research verifies its assimilationist character. According to the method specially compiled for this research, the results prove that the integration measures accepted in France between 2002-2012 show a development from a moderate to considerable assimilationist...

The thesis aims summarize political and legal framework of immigrant integration policies of Czech Republic and Slovakia. The main goal of thesis is to compare policies of these countries through comparative method and analyze what are their common characteristics and which features differ from each other. Attention is paid to influence of the European Union on development and form of integration policies of Czech and Slovak Republic, and on importance of international cooperation of these countries in this policy area. Thesis tries to confirm the hypothesis that integration policies of both compared countries are affected by regulations and documents adopted at the European Union level. Thesis consists of a theoretical part, analysis of integration policy of the European Union, analysis of integration policies of both countries and comparison of these policies. Analysis deals with development of these policies, legal framework, governmental and non-governmental institutions working in the field of immigrant integration and international cooperation of these countries within international organizations.

In the last decade, there has been a diffusion of civic integration policies in Europe, which requires immigrants by certain category of entry to accomplish integration tests for acquisition of residence. Despite a flurry of literature based on civic integration policies, attention drawn to the implication of these policies has been quite rare. This thesis examines how civic integration strategies associate with immigration, and tests if civic integration policies are connected to variations of immigration by certain category of entry. I argue in this thesis that the conditional factor in civic integration policies creates a barrier for affected migrants and their possibility to gain long term residence in the host country. Based on theories of immigrant integration that relate civic integration to the backlash against multiculturalism in Europe, the thesis emphasize a reasoning in which the push for internal inclusion seems to be associated with excluding implications. The result presented here shows that there are connections between the extension of civic integration policies and reduced family and labour immigration between 2004 and 2011. The connection between the variables can however not be discerned from other integration requirements. The main concern is the lack of harmonized data, which obstructs the possibility to test for causality and to draw generalizing conclusions. However, the thesis reveals noteworthy correlations between the concepts, which contribute to the research field by connecting civic integration to immigration and by showing what implications civic integration policies may result in.

The issue of civic integration and requirements for citizenship has been a far-reaching debate that has taken place in the Swedish political context for several years. From the Liberals’ pioneering proposal for a language test for immigrants in 2002, the issue has 19 years later moved towards an increasing consensus that today finds majority support in the Swedish parliament. Although the proposal seems to contribute to greater integration, there are many critical approaches to analyse. The question that arises is whether these types of proposals, through their discursive design, create conditions that actually support integration or instead induce discrimination and exclusion of certain groups. The purpose of this thesis is twofold. One aim is to critically examine and analyse the political proposal on language- and civic knowledge for Swedish citizenship by looking at government documents and motions from Sweden's opposition parties. The thesis examines whether racist discourses are reproduced or maintained by analysing the proposal to review further how it is legitimised. The secondary purpose will be to problematise how such a proposal can affect the right to citizenship based on the risks of discrimination and exclusion. This is done by guidance from Fairclough's three- dimensional model, whose method allows to examine the textual structure, the discursive and social practice of the given material. The theoretical framework evolved from theories that sufficiently understand how civic requirements can be understood based on different exclusion mechanisms. The essay concludes that the proposal raises issues of human rights, that the state legitimises the proposal through discursive means and that there are tendencies that reproduce racist discourses.

Dissertation deals with the problem of polyethnisation of Western European nation states, which is defined as the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity as a result of increasing immigration. This development poses a challenge for cohesion and continuity of the historical nation states, as well as for the stability of the current system of international relations. The dissertation deals with analyzing the specific responses of three countries - France, Germany and Great Britain - in a comparative perspective. Theoretical background represents allochthonous theory of ethnic minorities. The author explores different aspects of immigration policy (economic immigration, asylum, family immigration, illegal immigration) and integration policy (especially the granting of citizenship - by birth or naturalization - and civic integration policy). The results are placed within the theoretical scheme, working with 4 model approaches - exclusionism, segregationism, assimilationism and multiculturalism. The dissertation also gives the answer to the prospect of European integration and to question of the future of nation states in Europe.

It is often said that European Immigration Policy has been converged to civic integration policy, which requires immigrants to learn the culture, history, and language etc. of the host country. That trend of convergence is sometimes regarded as the European retreat from multiculturalism, and sometimes even as convergence to the assimilationism, and so called 'fortress Europe.' This doctoral thesis is aiming at attaining more sophisticated understanding of this phenomena, by conducting analyses both at the national level and European level. At national level, it challenges the common wisdom that civic integration basically aims at restricting migrants and tries to revalorize national citizenship, through comparative analysis of the Dutch and the German party politics at the stage of legislating key national civic integration policy. By doing so, it found that the diversity of national civic integration policy from liberal to restrictive. At the EU level, it challenges the assumption that the EU played a role in uploading national interests and promoted European convergence towards restrictive immigration policy. Through the analysis of each EU institution's attitude and their influence over national immigration policy. It tries to figure out the processes of negative Europeanization where the effects of EU laws and soft governance tools of the commission actually pre-emptively guide the national policy towards rather modest civic integration, and even prohibited national member states from adopting very restrictive policy at national level. From the combination of those findings, the thesis tries to propose new model of immigrant integration and citizenship acquisition, that is, 'phased integration model'. It interprets the convergence towards civic integration as institutionalization of immigrant integration path in each member states. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Since the 2018 elections Swedish political parties have been eager to enforce civic and language tests as prerequisite for citizenship. This turn in citizenship ideology is studied through problem representations which intend to solve the social segregation, alienation and the supposed poor language skills of immigrants residing in Sweden. By using Carol Bacchi’s approach to policy analysis, What’s the problem represented to be?, this thesis uncovers how the problem representations contain invisible for the naked eye instruments which appear to address the immigrants’ problems but in fact directly benefit the citizenship-holders.

Since the end of 1990s, a growing number of countries in Europe have introduced a new kind of integration measures, the so-called civic integration policies. <p>Formulated for the first time in the Netherlands in order to deal with the persistence of integration difficulties and the social cohesion concerns, these policies demand migrants to fulfill mandatory integration requirements in order to obtain the residence permit, its renewal, or the citizenship. <p>Among the other countries, Italy introduced a similar policy in 2009, the Integration Agreement (IA). The Italian example appears particular interesting, since this country looked like the less probable one that could choose a similar solution.<p>Examining the dynamics behind the adoption of the IA represents, therefore, a valuable opportunity not only to understand the Italian case, but also to highlight the mechanisms that have facilitated the diffusion of these policies in Europe. <p>The research highlights two main aspects. On the one hand, several politicians in different countries have proposed these solutions because they represent quite useful political resources in dealing with the “democratic impatience” of our political systems (Vermeulen and Penninx 1994). On the other hand, the building up of the EU and the growing interconnections of the national policy communities in this policy sector have played an indirect but not residual role in facilitating the convergence of the European countries towards similar solutions.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished