The importance of settled minorities for facilitating refugee belonging is seldom discussed in research on refugee integration. Drawing on scholarship on belonging, boundary-making, and bordering, this study investigates how boundaries are drawn between settled minorities and refugees in Bulgaria. Based on interviews with integration workers and organizations of settled minorities in a state with the largest historically present Muslim minority in the EU, an Arabic-speaking diaspora settled decades ago, and with minimal state involvement in refugee integration, the study shows how spatial, linguistic, and religious boundaries separate settled minorities from newly arrived refugees. Arabic-speaking diasporas are nevertheless witnessed to overcome the boundaries through geographical proximity, a shared language, and shared countries of origin, whereby they have functioned as facilitators of refugee belonging and inclusion. Furthermore, Muslim institutions led by Bulgarian Turks have functioned as spaces for refugee belonging. The study finds that settled minority communities have, despite multiple boundaries and some assimilatory discourses, contributed to refugee belonging in ways that in part has compensated for the state absence. The study calls for further research investigating the role of settled minorities in inclusionary processes in society.

This article provides an introduction to the themed section "Linguistic Justice, Migration and the Nation-State." First, it illustrates the rationale for the themed section by examining the relationship between language, migration and the nation-state. It argues that accounts of linguistic justice that fail to incorporate, discuss and understand the language interests of migrants, and the potential tensions that may emerge between migrants' linguistic rights and duties, and between their linguistic rights and those of autochthonous groups, are likely to become obsolete in an increasingly mobile world. Second, it provides an overview of the articles in the themed section. And, finally, it highlights four specific areas of inquiry that should deserve greater attention in future scholarship.

This study contributes with minority-centred perspectives to the policy trend of imposing majority language requirements on immigrants. With the aim to identify and explore (dis)connections and value conflicts between policies of national minority recognition and immigrant integration, it develops and applies four ideal types of minority-linguistic integration regimes to a mapping of integration and minority language policies in 27 European Union (EU) member states. Most states with recognized minorities are found to exclude national minorities from integration policies. The finding is connected to a discussion that identifies normative tensions between the promotion of national minority languages, the linguistic barriers faced by non-citizen migrants and the asymmetries in how identity and instrumental values are assigned to minority, migrant and majority languages. The study challenges the imposition of language requirements on immigrants and calls for contextually sensitive ways to jointly consider the position of national minorities, majorities, and immigrants in language policies.

In this article we discuss discourses of white mobility in reality television, a genre whose problematic post-racial and neoliberal discourses have long been exposed. Moving beyond the widely researched Anglophone media landscapes, we interrogate the discursive construction of white mobilities in the Swedish romance reality show Bonde Söker Fru – Jorden Runt (TV4, 2019-2020) [Farmer Seeks Wife – Around the World] where Swedish North-to-South migrants working as farmers abroad seek a partner from Sweden through the assistance of reality TV. By focusing on the discursive and visual strategies through which the show perpetuates racial hierarchies, we discuss the colonial imaginaries, the absence of border policies (such as residency, employment, or integration), and the significance of individual migratory preferences in the mobility discourses. We identify three forms of white mobility – the tourist, the adventurer, and the philanthropist – and show that migration is depicted as something reversible, an adventure, and a possibility for self-development, rather than a life-long decision with high stakes.

Unlike immigrants, national minorities are awarded recognition based on their long historical presence in the nation-state. While the political boundary between national minorities and immigrants is governed on state level, minorities’ own agency is significant for constructing and contesting ethnic and political boundaries. This article shows how Sweden-Finns, recognized as a national minority in Sweden since 2000, have contested the immigrant/national minority dichotomy in their transition from stigmatized post-war migranthood to recognized national minority-ness. By asking how boundary-making between migranthood and minority-ness is expressed in Sweden-Finnish ethnopolitical campaigns from the 1980s to the 2010s, we bring attention to how shifts in the socio-political and media technological contexts of these decades have shaped their mobilization. Through an analysis of newspaper articles, campaign material, and interviews, we show how Sweden-Finnish ethnic activists discursively construct identity and draw boundaries of belonging during different time periods.

Policies regulating immigrant integration constitute a core element of nation-building through the compliance they prescribe with cultural and linguistic norms. The recognition of multiple national belongings in states with national minorities and Indigenous peoples nevertheless challenges majority-centred notions of what integration should entail. Research on connections between integration and recognition, however, has mainly focused on minority substates such as Quebec and Catalonia, where local integration policies align with the respective minority nationalist project, leaving other contexts of recognition largely unexplored.

By employing critical and interpretive approaches to the study of politics, this study aims to explore connections, separations, and synergies between policies of national minority recognition and immigrant integration in Europe. Using a combination of document analysis, interviews, and ethnographic observation, it asks how integration policy produces or counters expressions of majority nationhood in states with recognized minorities, how colonial or imperial legacies shape such policies, and what normative tensions can be identified between the promotion of majority and minority identities. Theoretically, it draws on scholarship on liberal multiculturalism, settler colonial studies, and theories on belonging and boundary-making.

The four articles of this compilation dissertation combine empirical findings with normative questions. States with recognized minorities in EU27 are shown to reproduce majority nationhood through integration, which clashes with minority protection and with some migrants’ aspirations. In Finland, where the Swedish-speaking minority enjoys equal linguistic recognition with the majority, the minority and migrants are shown to mobilize to ensure the implementation of minority elements in the predominantly majority-centred integration. In Indigenous Swedish Sápmi, state-led integration is found to largely reproduce colonial practices, which are nevertheless also occasionally challenged. In Bulgaria, Turkish-speaking, Muslim minorities are othered in society and marginal within integration, even though post-Ottoman Muslim institutions have come to function as spaces of belonging for recent refugees.

Integration policies are shown to misrecognize minorities and thereby fail to represent the actual heterogeneity faced by migrants. Past and present linguistic, religious, racial, and societal contestations are shown to intersect in complex, layered ways that contemporary monolingual, territory-based models of minority recognition and integration fail to capture. The study’s findings have normative implications for research on minority recognition and integration and call for contextually sensitive perspectives to rethink present policies that serve the goals of majority nation-building rather than mirror actual societal belongings.

Integrationspolitik har en viktig nationsbyggande funktion då den ställer krav på kulturell och språklig kunskap som vanligtvis reproducerar majoritetsnationalism. Integrationskravens utformning utmanas emellertid i stater med erkända nationella minoriteter och urfolk där flera tillhörigheter officiellt erkänts och därmed kan förväntas ta plats i nationsbyggande narrativ. Tidigare forskning om kopplingar mellan integrationspolitik och minoritetserkännande har i huvudsak fokuserat på federala autonoma minoritetsterritorier såsom Quebec och Katalonien, där de lokala integrationspolicyerna stödjer det minoritetsnationalistiska projektet. Hur övriga former av minoritetserkännande förhåller sig till integration är i stort sett outforskat i litteraturen.

Denna avhandling har som syfte att utforska kopplingar, skiljelinjer, spänningar och synergier mellan minoritetserkännande och integrationspolitik i Europa. Avhandlingen tillämpar kritiska och tolkande perspektiv på material bestående av dokument, intervjuer och etnografisk observation. Den kretsar kring tre forskningsfrågor: Hur producerar eller motverkar integrationspolitik uttryck av majoritetsnationalism i stater med erkända minoriteter? Hur formar koloniala arv och stormaktsarv denna politik? Vilka normativa spänningar kan utläsas mellan minoritetserkännande och integration? Avhandlingens teoretiska ramverk bygger på forskning om liberal mångkulturalism, bosättarkolonialism, samt teorier om tillhörighet och gränsdragande.

De fyra artiklarna i denna sammanläggningsavhandling kombinerar empiriska resultat med normativa frågor. I en policygenomgång visas att EU:s 27 medlemsländeri hög grad reproducerar majoritetsnationalism i sin integrationspolitik, vilket kan anses krocka med målet att skydda minoriteter från majoritetens dominans samt vissa invandrares minoritetsspråkliga omgivning. I Finland, där den finlandssvenska minoriteten enligt lag har lika stark språklig ställning som den finskspråkiga majoriteten, visas hur minoriteten och invandrare mobiliserar sig för att säkerställa att även minoritetsspråket inkluderas i den majoritetscentrerade implementeringen av integrationspolitiken. I den svenska delen av Sápmi visas att den statliga integrationspolitiken till stor del reproducerar koloniala praktiker, vilka dock till viss del utmanas framförallt i implementeringen. I Bulgarien visas hur språkliga, religiösa och geografiska gränsdragningar bidrar till att få kontakter uppstår mellan den turkiskspråkiga, muslimska nationella minoriteten och nyanlända flyktingar, även om post-osmanska muslimska institutioner har kommit att skapa tillhörighet för nyanlända flyktingar i ett land där staten är frånvarande vad gäller integrationsstöd.

Avhandlingen visar att integrationspolitiken i de undersökta länderna endast ger marginellt utrymme för minoritetstillhörigheter och därmed misslyckas med att representera den faktiska samhälleliga heterogenitet som invandrare möter. Historiska och samtida spänningar kopplade till språk, religion, etnicitet och ras interagerar på komplexa vis, som nutida enspråkiga, monokulturella och territoriella modeller av minoritetserkännande och integration inte lyckas fånga. Avhandlingens resultat har normativa implikationer för forskningen om minoritetserkännande och integrationspolitik och efterlyser kontextbundna perspektiv för att ompröva den nuvarande politiken som tjänar majoritetsnationsbygge snarare än speglar samhällets faktiska mångfald.

In an endeavour to understand connections between immigration policy and contemporary colonialism on Indigenous territory, this study investigates how state-led immigrant integration policies and practices reproduce colonialism in Swedish Sapmi. It explores the applicability of scholarship on settler colonialism on Sweden and develops the notion of banal colonialism by combining scholarship on settler and everyday colonialism with banal nationalism. Drawing from state documents regulating immigrant integration and semi-structured interviews conducted with integration workers in Swedish Sapmi, the study shows that immigrant integration policy largely silences the colonial past and present of Sweden. While the implementation of national-level policies on Indigenous land reproduces majority-centred narratives, also practices challenging the colonial order are identified. The study shows how the notion of banal colonialism captures mundane colonial practices, but also brings attention to instances where immigrant integration policy has the potential of challenging settler colonialism.