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Illiberal Means to Liberal Ends? Understanding Recent Immigrant Integration Policies in Europe

A number of European governments have pronounced multiculturalism a failure and opted for more aggressive means of integrating immigrants into their societies. This paper asks what we are to make of this trend: does it reflect deeply rooted illiberal prejudice or a novel shift in liberal-democratic states' approaches to nation-building? I suggest that aggressive integrationism is reflective of a distinctly ‘Schmittian’ liberalism, which aims to clarify the core values of liberal societies and use coercive state power to protect them from illiberal and putatively dangerous groups. In contrast to liberal multiculturalists, who counsel accommodation, compromise and negotiation among majority and minority groups, Schmittian liberals see the task of immigrant integration as part of a broader campaign to preserve ‘Western civilisation’ from illiberal threats. Their framing of the problem in existentialist terms allows them to justify policies that might otherwise be seen to contravene liberal principles of toleration and equality. As such, Schmittian liberalism complicates our understanding of liberal states' approaches to immigration and immigrant integration policies.