Integration has been falling out of favour of in academic circles. Once heralded as the preferred approach to post-immigration diversity, it has more recently become the focus of scrutiny and criticism. Integration’s perennial preoccupation with immigrant diversity is seen by some as hardening differences, not softening them. Its top-down, statist approach is held by others to be out of touch with the lived experiences of the people it seeks to integrate. And still others see it as a tool of nationalism, sometimes with racialising undertones. These critiques and others like them have led some observers to conclude that the best thing to do with integration is to move beyond it. I agree with these critiques, but not with their conclusion. Binning integration ignores the real world issues integration can address and risks side-lining academics from policy debate. Rather than abandon integration, our aim is to reclaim, redefine, and recondition it to make it a positive force in the world. We begin by shifting integration’s focus away from national difference and toward social distance. With social distance the problem, I the elaborate a fix that 1) includes everyone (not just immigrants), 2) sees people as the everyday agents of integration (not the state), and 3) begins locally (and doesn’t end nationally). This inclusive, bottom-up, and local approach to integration lessens the barriers of social distance so that people can get on with the everyday practice of integration.

Jon is a sociologist in the School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies at the University of Bristol. His main areas of research are in nationalism, racism, migration, and integration. With each topic, he is interested in the ways these ideas, processes, structures, and ideologies are reproduced by people in their everyday lives. Whilst appreciating the important role politics, culture, and the economy play in shaping these things, Jon’s research pays special attention to the ways they are also the practical accomplishments of people doing routine things. His research to date has examined these issues around questions in the UK, Hungary, and Romania.

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