History and policy: separate models of integration

I have discussed in Chapter One how the mandatory integration policies that spread across Europe can be distinguished between integration requirements that must be fulfilled to renew a status or access permanent residence or citizenship, and integration policies that are mandatory regardless of applying for a legal status and are backed by fines (see also Pascouau, 2018). At the time of writing Belgium has mandatory, fines-backed policies for at least part of the migrant population on the whole territory; further, integration courses are one way to fulfil the requirements for the acquisition of nationality. Finally, recent changes to immigration policy have linked integration courses to the renewal of residence status. In this chapter I will discuss the transformations of integration policies in Belgium, with particular attention to the development of mandatory measures and the groups of migrants targeted by such measures, and in part to the content of the courses introduced. I will further discuss the implementation of the integration courses in the Wallonia Region, again with particular reference to the decision making about the obligation to complete the course and to the migrants to which it is directed. This does not obviously cover the whole process of implementation of the integration policies, which includes decisions on how to teach the specific programmes that policymakers have made mandatory. It would be difficult to give an exhaustive examination of this process even for the Wallonia Region as the integration courses are largely taught by associations that have some discretion as to the content, as well as the length, of the teachings, and I am not aware of other ethnographic research on the management of integration teaching in Belgium (but see Van Hoof et al, 2020 on the teaching of Dutch as part of employment policies in Flanders). There is, however, research on how integrations courses are taught and managed day to day in a number of countries, including Norway (Hagelund and Kavli, 2009; Hagelund, 2010), the Netherlands (Suvarierol, 2015; Suvarierol and Kirk, 2015; Belabas and Gerrits, 2017), France (Gourdeau, 2016; 2018a; 2018b; 2019; Onasch, 2017) and Denmark (Lonsmann, 2020).