match between supply and demand.
2.2 Target groups: Who has the right to be/become an immigrant and to be inte grated?
Another question to be addressed is: integration for whom? Migrant integration policies that formulate spe- cific groups of immigrants as target groups are different from policies that focus on all immigrants. And these are substantially different from policies that target all individuals regardless of their origin or that target natives. Policies may also target collectives (organisations, civil society) rather than individuals. They may even target general institutions of society. In practice, these different approaches result in very different policies with regard to the three dimensions of integration:
- political rights can be granted to immigrants as individuals, for instance by granting voting rights, or as members of a group, which often means the creation of representative bodies;
- policies may seek to promote equal opportunities for all citizens, meaning equal access to hous- ing, education, health care and the labour market, or equal share in their actual access to these goods and services;
- finally, cultural diversity can be promoted as an individual or as a group right, the latter often implying the state support to immigrants' organisations and own institutions.
Dealing more specifically with immigration issues, Article 79 of the TFEU indicates “the Union shall develop a common immigration policy aimed at ensuring, at all stages, the efficient management of migration flows, fair treatment of third-country nationals residing legally in Member States, and the prevention of, and en- hanced measures to, combat illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings”.
As a matter of principle, at the European level there is a fundamental disjunction between policies applicable to migrants in an irregular situation, who should theoretically be excluded from the territory, and migrants legally residing in the Member States, who should theoretically be included into the receiving society. Begin- ning in 1999 with the Tampere European Council conclusions, and adopted immediately after the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, the common approach to immigration and asylum polices should “ensure the integration into our societies of those third country nationals who are lawfully resident in the Union”. Also the Common Basic Principles on Integration, endorsed by the November 2004 Justice and Home Affairs Council emphasised that “a critical aspect of managing migration is the successful integration of legally re- siding immigrants and their descendants”14.
12 http://research.icmpd.org/1429.html 13 http://www.ru.nl/law/cmr/projects/intec/
Ten years after the adoption of the Common Basic Principles, the June 2014 Justice and Home Affairs Council agreed to adopt conclusions of the Council and the Representatives of the Governments of the Member States on the integration. The mere title of the document is self-sufficient to portray the limited scope of the conclusions which address the integration “of third-country nationals legally residing in the EU”15.
As a matter of fact, policy orientations at EU level are locked into a logic whereby integration policies and measures should only accompany legally residing third country nationals and are never linked with the po- tential fact that third country nationals in an a priori irregular situation could be granted a right to reside and therefore fall within the ambit of inclusion policies.
The distinction “legal/inclusion” vs. “irregular/exclusion” deeply affects the way policy makers perceive and develop migration policies. The basic idea that migrants in an irregular situation should not remain on the territory, or be expelled, is accompanied with the development of detention practices. Hence, once ar- rived on the territory or once discovered in the territory migrants in an irregular situation are often, and sometimes systematically16, subject to detention17. This derives from the widely shared principle that mi-
grants in an irregular situation should be removed and that detention is an efficient practice to ensure re- moval.
The situation of migrants apprehended at the border is quasi-systematically managed under “security- driven” procedures. In such circumstances, the necessity to identify people or the belief that migrants would abscond lead national authorities to detain people. The use of detention in such circumstances is a well- established policy which plays as a deterrent measures towards migrants who may be willing to access the territory without authorisation18. But these practices, whether developed due to time constraints or imple-
mented for political purposes, do not take into account the effects detention may have on individuals in the immediate, medium or long run and in particular regarding integration.
The distinction “legal migration = inclusion” and “irregular migration = exclusion” is firmly rooted in EU and Member States policies. It has had the consequence of creating an artificial disconnection between policy fields of migration and integration, with the effect to exclude integration policies from an entire side of im- migration and also asylum policy. Hence, the fight against irregular migration has validated the use of de- tention as a tool to hamper people to enter as well as to deter people to migrate. In this context, a large number of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees have been detained and released, bearing the physical and psychological scars of detention sometimes a long time after.
The above mentioned distinction “legal migration = inclusion” and “irregular migration = exclusion” effects the national and the local level in a particular way. Indeed, while this definition matches completely the na- tional philosophy, at local level, regions and cities which are at the forefront of integration policies, have to face also the very concrete problem of irregular migrants’ needs in particular in education and health. There are cities which adopt the so-called human right framewhich regards undocumented in general, does no matter the reason of their stay (e.g., for work reasons, to seek asylum etc.), as particularly vulnerable individuals, who have to face more threats to their safety and security than ordinary residents and are at
15 http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/143109.pdf
16 “Invisible Suffering. Prolonged and systematic detention of migrants and asylum seekers in substandard conditions in Greece”,
Médecins sans Frontières, 2014, Report available at the following address: http://www.msf.org/sites/msf.org/files/invisible_suffer- ing.pdf
17 The number of detention centers has increased over time in the EU, see for instance work undertaken by several NGO’s in this
regard like Migreurop http://en.closethecamps.org/2014/03/03/europe-of-camps-deploys-its-web/ and the Atlas http://www.mi- greurop.org/IMG/pdf/Carte_Atlas_Migreurop_19122012_Version_francaise_version_web.pdf
18 As pointed out by the UNHCR “Putting people in detention has become a routine – rather than exceptional – response to the
irregular entry or stay of asylum-seekers and migrants in a number of countries. Some governments view detention as a means to dissuade irregular migration to or applying for asylum in their territories”, in “Beyond Detention. A Global Strategy to support gov- ernments to end the detention of asylum-seekers and refugees”, UNHCR 2014. Available online: http://www.un- hcr.org/53aa929f6.pdf.
greater risk of marginalisation because of their lack of a residence permit. Cities that adopt such an approach show a particularly open stance towards undocumented immigrants’ access to fundamental rights, from legal status to health, education, housing etc. and to legal status in particular.
A case in point is the Communist city of Pierre-Bénite, in the Lyon area in France, which in the 2000s set up, together with the NGO Cimade, particularly active support for immigrants, an “alert system” aimed at mon- itoring the difficult situations faced by some illegal immigrants in the city and at finding favourable solutions in collaboration with the Prefecture. A second example is the city of Ghent in Belgium, the municipality offers legal advice to all immigrants, irrespectively of their juridical conditions, in order to favour their access to other services and rights. Public officials together with NGOs are crucial in undertaking and carrying out this kind of legal service (Caponio, 2014b).
On the other side, there are local levels which are in line with the national level by following the security frame that targets primarily national residents, with the aim of reassuring them about the respect of legality in the city and about the enactment of controls on unwanted immigration. Usually, the political discourse in these cities is openly anti-immigrants and the concrete actions carried out are aimed at sending the message that undocumented migrants are not welcomed. The main strategy is introducing restrictive measures as public order ordinances that make life for them extremely difficult and therefore impede access to legal sta- tus (Caponio, 2014b).
Third country nationals are the target defined by the European Union for integration and migration policy. Quite surprisingly, although not having the competence to rule on this policy field, the EU took the chance to define the specific target for the existing policy or those to be implemented. Against the European back- drop, the right to be or become a migrant is granted to those people who respond to conditions stated in the European Directives and in the national laws. Asylum seekers are those having the moral rights to be or become immigrants.