Résultat de la recherche
Il/liberal Integrationism. A Contradiction in Terms: Respecting the Values of the Constitution as an Integration Requirement in Switzerland
What work does integration do, as an idea and as bureaucratic practice, through the mobilization of “shared values”? This thesis takes Switzerland as a case study and sets out to answer this question at the intersection of social science and political philosophy. As integration regimes in Europe increasingly require migranticized subjects to have shared values, the thesis puts the integration requirement to respect the values of the constitution at the core of its investigation. Based on a grounded theory analysis of state discourse and practice in Swiss naturalization and immigration street-level bureaucracies, the thesis examines what the value requirement is, how it is applied and how it is justified. This inquiry reveals an il/liberal integrationism that manifests itself in different ways. First, it produces a culturalized social imaginary of society as a community of value(s), which in turn legitimizes aggressive integrationism. Second, the knowledge production on the value requirement by street-level bureaucrats is characterized by a tight grip on subjects’ intimacy and an imperative urge to know and feel their integration. This integration governance can be understood as a totalizing institution in that it seeks to access inner convictions and to govern all spheres of life. Third, il/liberal integrationism operates, discursively, through boundary making in the name of liberal values while, normatively, it is at odds with fundamental principles of liberal democracy. A grounded normative theory approach illustrates how integrationism violates the very liberal democratic values the requirement purports to foster. The thesis concludes that the value requirement and the ideology of shared values are incompatible with liberal democracy. Against an essentially migranticized understanding of integration and il/liberal integrationism that seeks to monitor, discipline and exclude migranticized subjects in the name of shared values, the thesis pleads for a conception of liberal democracy as fundamentally constituted by value pluralism and democratic contestation. Agonistic democracy and radical liberalism offer alternative imaginaries to think of the state, society and democracy beyond the integration nation.