The dialectics of immigrant ‘integration’ and marginality in industrialising America and post-industrial Europe

Immigration policies in Italy and Spain — even the restrictive policies put in place over the last several years — emphasise the importance of immigrant ‘integration'. At the same time, immigrants are welcome largely on the grounds that they fill important niches in the labour market, such as low-end jobs in construction, agriculture, and domestic service, that locals shun. This article explores the relationship between immigrants’ economic function in this southern flank of the European fortress, and their ability to integrate into the host society. Specifically, it argues that it is immigrants’ ‘otherness’ that is their calling card — their passport — in these new countries of immigration, and that their full integration into Spanish and Italian societies presumably would spell an end to their utility as ‘others'. Further, it documents the difficulties of integrating those who are legally and economically marginalised and for whom that marginality is seen as their chief virtue. The author makes comparisons with ‘Americanisation’ programmes in industrialising America and suggests that in both cases, the contradiction between the cheap labour of immigrants and the need to integrate them helps explain both the motivation for integration efforts and their complications.