Introduction: Assimilation, integration or transnationalism? An overview of theories of migrant incorporation
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Author | Barbara Laubenthal |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13118 |
84 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig Int Migr. 2023;61:84–91.
The incorporation of immigrants is one of the most important issues both in immigration research and for immigra-
tion societies. The question of how foreigners become members of a new society and are able to enjoy full access to
social, economic and political rights has been as relevant for historical immigration processes like the 19th-century
European immigration to the United States as it is for the recent Syrian refugee immigration to Europe or migrants
from Latin America who are seeking to escape the violence and corruption in their home countries and are trying
to cross the US southern border. To explain incorporation processes, two research paradigms have for a long time
dominated scholarly and later also political debates. The first one, assimilation, was introduced as a scholarly concept
at the end of the 19th century, but the article Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to
Negro by US sociologist Robert Park published in 1914 is widely considered the first seminal contribution on the
topic. The ideas expressed by Park were further developed over the next decades, and in the 1980 s, the concept of
assimilation crossed the Atlantic and was taken up by European sociologists. In Germany, in particular, US assimilation
theory became the basis for one of the most important approaches, the integration concept by sociologist Hartmut
Esser (1980, 2004). Esser adapted the concept that had been further developed by American sociologists like Milton
Gordon to explain the process of integration of migrants in the receiving society. Esser's theory of integration became
the basis for a whole school of thought and, especially after 2000, gained more and more influence in the political
sphere. While being very similar, the concept of ‘Integration’ became more commonly used in Europe while ‘assimila-
tion’ was used more in the U.S. context.
However, at the beginning of the 1990s, an alternative way of conceptualizing migrants' incorporation started to
garner attention from the scientific community. The concept of transnationalism was first developed by US anthro-
pologists (Basch et al., 1994). It was an explicit critique of the assimilation theory, and most importantly its focus on
the nation-state.
Although all three concepts – assimilation, integration, transnationalism – have been subject to a whole range
of revisions over the years, they have remained highly influential. All three still play an important role in the scholarly
realm, and assimilation and integration concepts are often reflected in immigration policies and public perceptions
of immigrants, both in Europe and in the United States. There are good reasons that all three concepts did become
so influential. While assimilation and integration provide us with a theoretical framework that lends itself to easy
operationalization to trace the process by which immigrants adapt in a new country, transnationalism reminds us
that the immigrants that we encounter in receiving societies are not a ‘blank slate’. Rather, they may have significant
and various ties to their home country. Furthermore, these theories were developed in response to new immigra-
tion processes that researchers witnessed at different historical stages, and each one was based on a large amount
of empirical observation. From observations about immigrants in American cities in the 1920s and various phases
of openness and restriction in the 1930s and 1960s, to post-colonial and the so-called guest worker migration
in Western Europe immigration to the United States in the 1960s, to anthropologists in the United States in the
1980s, assimilation, integration and transnationalism were to some extent scientific answers to realities that scholars
witnessed.
SPECIAL ISSUE
DOI: 10.1111/imig.13118
Received: 27 December 2022 Accepted: 29 December 2022
Introduction: Assimilation, integration or
transnationalism? An overview of theories of
migrant incorporation
© 2023 International Organization for Migration.
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