In comparative studies of European migration and civic integration, most attention tends to be invested in analyzing the content of policies and national citizenship models. How these policies have been operationalized, i.e., how different European governments translated their policies into actual civic integration programs, is a relatively less explored area of study. I have explored how the Bourdieusian concept of ‘field’ can guide us in opening the box of national models and generates a complex and dynamic analysis of civic integration as a policy field: Which actors have been involved in processes of defining the form and content of civic integration? How has their involvement affected the rules and norms of the resulting civic integration regime? These are the main questions I have addressed, relying on original empirical qualitative data gathered in 2011 in France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Using historical analysis, I have reconstructed and compared how the composition of the particular civic integration field in each country influenced the actual civic integration programs as migrants experienced them in practice. The relational concept of field has proven to be productive in discovering the dynamic nature of policy contexts and products. The challenge, especially for comparative researchers, lies in reconstructing the complex constellations in each country by identifying and studying the relevant actors involved in the process of operationalizing policy to practice.

Bio: Semin Suvarierol received her PhD at the Utrecht University on a thesis on the effect of nationality on the networking behavior of Commission officials. She then worked as post-doctoral researcher at the Sociology Department of Erasmus University Rotterdam on national identity constructions in France, the Netherlands, and the UK in the domain of citizenship policies and at the Public Administration Department of Erasmus University Rotterdam on the integration of family migrants in the Netherlands. Her most recent research results in the domain of migration have been published in International Sociology, Nations & Nationalism, Social Politics, Citizenship Studies, Journal of Social Policy, and Ethnicities

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