Knocking on the Doors of Integration : Swedish Integration Policy and the Production of a National Space

This article contributes to theoretical discussions on how immigrant integration is produced as a part of redefining national policy to local everyday practice, and what this tells us about the society in which the policy is formed. Integration is from this perspective a way to understand imagined social communities, how they are produced, who is considered to belong, and who is not. Document analysis and interviews with immigrants, local politicians, and officials in small- and medium-sized Swedish towns give insights into both what taken-for-granted assumptions the integration policy builds on and reproduces, and what consequences the integration policy have for the persons the policy is intended for. It is shown that the Swedish integration policy is itself a part of the production of a Swedish space as a container with closed doors, where immigrants are not given equal access and possibilities. This is created by putting sameness and difference at the core of the integration policy and by describing integration as an act of entering the Swedish space.