Immigration and relationships. comparing philosophies of integration

Abstract

Owing to the assumption that belonging to acommunity means to bind the single migrant to the host community,and to determine the conditions for granting hospitality, support,services, and rights in general, traditional policies of integration areconcentrated on individual culture and subjective rights. In this article, I try to criticize traditional approaches to immigration andintegration, which are based on such a functional and individualistic perspective: on the contrary, I try to demonstrate that immigration has to be understood not only in relation to the individual migrants and their talents, but also to the relational system moving with them (families and communities). Only considering these relations and focusing on the problem of recognition, it is thus possible to realize that integrating means to recognize relational models. Recognitionis always connected to the identification, evaluation and regulation of practices shared by families, groups and communities livingtogether in the same society.