Copying Europe? Integration as a Citizenship Requirement in Australia

Abstract

Recent decades have seen a significant expansion of so-called “integration requirements” for citizenship applicants in many countries. Though led by European states, the trend now seems to be reaching traditional settler states such as Australia. This article examines the integration requirement proposed for citizenship applicants in Australia in 2017. According to the proposal, applicants for citizenship by conferral would have been required to show that they had “integrated into the Australian community,” for instance, through employment, involvement in community organizations, and the absence of conduct inconsistent with Australian values. Although the proposal failed, it is noteworthy because of its far-reaching nature and novelty in a traditional country of immigration. This article analyzes the implications of the proposed legislation with reference to the diverse groups of permanent immigrants entering Australia, demonstrating its discriminatory potential in terms of gender, nationality, and visa category. It argues that the proposal failed because despite its significant implications, the government did not put forward a convincing case for its introduction and may even have initiated it as a symbolic gesture. The article contributes to understanding why integration requirements that are popular in some states and regions may fail to gain favor in others. It suggests that, given the rapid spread of restrictive immigration policies, scholars should pay more attention to the specific local conditions under which immigration and citizenship policy transfers succeed or fail.

Keywords

integration requirements citizenship policy transfer

Introduction

Integration requirements for immigrants and prospective citizens have become popular in immigrant-receiving states, especially in Western Europe, in the last 20 years (Joppke 2017, 1153). As a result, immigrants’ access to naturalization in European states is increasingly contingent on fulfilling various integration requirements to show that they have the necessary knowledge and desirable attributes of good (prospective) citizens (Orgad 2010; Michailowski 2011; van Oers 2014). Indeed, integration requirements challenge Kymlicka and Normann’s (1994, 353) claim that “we should expect a theory of the good citizen to be relatively independent of the legal question of what it is to be a citizen.” Instead, integration requirements formalize conceptions of good citizenship into yardsticks against which immigrants are measured (Etzioni 2007).

“Integration” policies can, however, vary, depending on national and regional contexts. In many European states, especially those with restrictive citizenship policies, such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria, integration is increasingly “enforced” (Jesse 2017, 16) by testing immigrants, often in various stages of their migration trajectory, to ensure they not only have the necessary knowledge but also demonstrate the correct value orientations (Goodman 2010; Michailowski 2011; van Oers 2014). In contrast, in settler states, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, where immigration is a longstanding and ongoing reality, integration has typically been assessed at the citizenship stage by employing a more minimal approach, usually a knowledge-based citizenship test (Orgad 2011; Joppke 2013). Insofar as the proliferation of more demanding integration requirements in Europe suggests an emerging common understanding of the need to govern immigration more intensively (Joppke and Eule 2016), it has been unclear to what extent such policies will be transferred to traditional settler states.

This article examines the failure of a recent Australian proposal aimed at introducing a more far-reaching integration requirement, and which was contained in the right-wing government’s controversial citizenship overhaul put forward in 2017. The Australian Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Requirements for Australian Citizenship and Other Measures) Bill proposed that applicants for citizenship by conferral¹ must “demonstrate integration.” This requirement’s specific content was said to consist of the following:

Applicants will need to demonstrate their integration into the Australian community, by providing, for example, documentation to the effect that people who can work are working, or are actively looking for work or to educate themselves; or that people are contributing to the community by being actively involved in community or voluntary organisations; that people are properly paying their taxes, adhering to social security laws and ensuring their children are being educated. Applicants’ criminal records are also relevant. In addition to existing police checks…an applicant will also be assessed for any conduct that is inconsistent with Australian values, such as domestic or family violence, criminality including procuring or facilitating female genital mutilation and involvement in gangs and organised crime. (Australian Government 2017, 15)

Under the proposed legislation, citizenship applicants would have been expected not just to be generally law abiding (already an existing requirement) but also to provide evidence of both undertaking desirable activities, such as employment, and possessing a virtuous outlook that respected “Australian values.” The original bill passed the House of Representatives, but it failed to get through the Senate in October 2017 (Hutchens 2017). Although the government was still reportedly “consulting” about possible changes to ensure the bill’s adoption in late 2018 (Kainth 2018), nothing came of the proposal before the 2019 election. Despite the right-wing Coalition government’s re-election in May 2019, the overhaul seems to have been abandoned (Killoran 2019).

Why examine this failed proposal? In some ways, the failure appears consistent with the aforementioned tendency, whereby stricter integration requirements thrive in Europe, but are not popular in traditional countries of immigration. However, the reason for this pattern being so remains unclear. Policy transfer is notoriously complex, making attempts to understand successes or failures of attempted transfers difficult and contested (Duncan 2009). Nonetheless, understanding failure is important for the further development of policy making and policy transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 2000; Marsh and Sharman 2009; Howlett 2012). Equally important, policies may fail in different ways, and these failures may be rooted in multiple causes, for instance programmatic issues involving the policy’s aim, content, and outcomes; processual issues including failure to gain support or legitimacy; and/or political reasons (McConnell 2010, 2015; Marsh and McConnell 2010). Given the importance and rapid spread of legal transplants that advance restrictive immigration policies, both historically and at present (Ghezelbash 2014, 2017), it is important to unpack why policies adopted in a number of European states failed to “travel” successfully to Australia and to “identify which factors are related to successful or unsuccessful transfer” (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, 17).

Accordingly, this article examines why the proposal for a European-style integration requirement failed in Australia. Given that the policy was never implemented, it is not possible to analyze the proposal from a full programmatic viewpoint, in the sense of whether the new requirement would have resulted in greater or lesser “integration” of individual migrants, however defined. However, the proposal’s content is relevant for assessing its nature and magnitude, which in turn are both important for assessing the process-related and political dimensions of the failure itself. This article suggests that the proposal under examination here failed because despite the proposed change’s significant scope, the Australian government failed to formulate the proposal in a way that secured its legitimacy and attracted support from other parties that was needed to get the proposal through the Senate. The failure’s political dimension is more complex. Though the proposal’s defeat is in some ways a self-evident setback for the government’s agenda of narrowing access to citizenship, the proposal’s sudden introduction and equally sudden disappearance suggest the possibility that the integration requirement may have been introduced as a way to score political points and even as “symbolic politics” (Mourão Permoser 2012, 173).

To develop these arguments, this article first outlines the rise of integration requirements, introduced in many European states amid concerns over immigrant incorporation and social cohesion, and the proposed Australian integration requirement. It then examines the proposal’s scope, in terms of its likely impacts on migrants with diverse nationalities, backgrounds, and experiences, in order to demonstrate the proposal’s magnitude. From there, the article argues that the proposal’s failure in both process-related and political terms is connected to its wide ambition, which was not matched by the government’s ability (or desire) to maneuver the proposal through the political process. The introduction of the integration requirement in Australia indicates that citizenship is becoming increasingly contested in settler states, raising further questions about the future direction of citizenship and the extent to which settler states will seek to emulate Europe.

The Rise of Integration Requirements: What and Why?

Integration, despite being “an empty concept” (Kostakopoulou 2010a, 4), or perhaps because of it, has become “a concern of high priority” in many immigrant-receiving societies, especially in Europe (Joppke 2007, 246). Amid heightened concerns over migrant marginalization, extremism, and welfare dependence, states such as Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Austria have led the development of requirements that link citizenship acquisition to civic integration and respect for national values and culture (Joppke 2007; van Oers, Ersbøll and Kostakopoulou 2010; Vink and de Groot 2010; Orgad 2010; Joppke 2013; van Oers 2014). The idea behind such policies is that language competence and knowledge of values and culture assist migrants to integrate into the economy and the society, and that communitarian demands, such as identification with the host society, foster integration (Mourão Permoser 2012, 175). Increasingly, European states mandate that “immigrants have to earn their rights by showing some degree of integration” (Jesse 2017, 5).

In Europe, integration is, thus, becoming both “mandatory and test-based” (Orgad 2017, 351), and integration policy has moved toward a set of legal requirements about correct attitudes, knowledge, and activities (Besselink 2009; Kostakopoulou 2010a; Goodman 2012). The Netherlands is often considered a model in the introduction of formal integration benchmarks, requirements, and exams for immigrants seeking citizenship and/or permanent residence (Goodman 2012). Indeed, its “inburgering” requirements are not confined to the conferral of citizenship; some immigrants in the Netherlands are subjected to a particular set of legal obligations that require some of them to demonstrate their knowledge of Dutch society before they even arrive in the country (Besselink 2009; van Oers 2014). More commonly, however, European states assess integration via “citizenship tests” at the citizenship conferral stage, with tests screening prospective citizens for the knowledge required for successful membership (de Groot, Kuipers, and Weber 2009; van Oers 2010). In their more restrictive forms (e.g., the Netherlands), tests probe not simply knowledge of history and society but also values and attitudes (van Oers, Ersbøll, and Kostakopoulou 2010; Orgad 2010; van Oers 2014).

Moreover, in some of the most “insular” or “exclusionary” European regimes, such as Denmark and Austria (Vink and Bauböck 2013), integration is assessed particularly rigorously by also scrutinizing applicants for their “good character” beyond tests and the fairly common requirement that applicants should not have serious criminal convictions (Kostakopoulou 2003). For instance, Austria requires, along with a long lawful residence period (10 years) and citizenship and language tests, that applicants “must have a regular income and must not have received social assistance benefits for three years within the last six years preceding the application” (Stern and Valchars 2013, 22). Criteria are similar in Denmark, where citizenship has been framed as a reward for successful integration (Goodman 2012). A long general residence requirement (nine years), language requirements, and a citizenship test are supplemented by necessary proof that applicants have been “self-supporting” (i.e., not receiving any public benefits) for the majority of their residence prior to making a citizenship application, and that they have no overdue debts to the state (Ersbøll 2015).

Similar expectations of good behavior have been contemplated in the more liberal regime of the United Kingdom. In 2008, the United Kingdom proposed an initial time-limited status called “probationary citizenship,” with the possibility for migrants to “earn” their right to progress to citizenship more quickly by acting in a desirable way, including working hard, being self-sufficient, and demonstrating active citizenship via community-minded activities like volunteering (Home Office 2008). This British proposal did not succeed, but its content is instructive. The idea that “migrants would have to be ‘successful’ probationary citizens before becoming eligible for naturalisation” (Kostakopoulou 2010b, 834) translated into an expectation to demonstrate “a more visible and a more substantial contribution” before proceeding to naturalization (Home Office 2008, 6). As Kostakopoulou (2010b, 836) points out, the focus on migrants’ contribution, including their economic performance, suggests that they have been “defaulting” in their responsibilities while ignoring structures that complicate migrants’ ability to integrate. Indeed, as noted in the Austrian context, requirements about participation in the economy/society may exclude some migrants, such as those with a disability, who cannot be ‘blamed’ for their lack of participation (Stern and Valchars 2013, 22–23).

Formal integration requirements have been much more minimal in traditional countries of immigration, largely consisting of comparatively easy citizenship tests that are focused on knowledge about society and political system, not morals or values (Joppke 2013). Former colonies that developed as settler countries have been considered more likely to extend rights to immigrants, including access to citizenship (Koopmans and Michalowski 2017). Some settlement states, such as the United States and Canada, have had a citizenship test for a long time (Orgad 2011), while others, like Australia, have adopted them more recently (in 2007; see Levey 2014). Whether existing citizenship tests have been tweaked or new ones introduced, the tests remain generally focused on knowledge rather than attitudes (Joppke 2013). However, Dauvergne (2016) has argued that recent developments involving citizenship tests — introduced, as in Europe, amid integrationist rhetoric and driven by conservative/right-side politics — suggest that settler states are increasingly embracing restrictive policies that are not that different from developments in other Western liberal democracies. However, she also admits that changes in the field of citizenship have so far resulted in “ultimately an easy test focused on liberal political values that states generally want people to pass” (Dauvergne 2016, 102; Joppke 2013).

The leniency of settlement states’ approaches to formal citizenship testing has been attributed to the fact that in traditional immigration states, “migration law does the dirty work for citizenship law, ensuring that those who can become citizens meet the nation’s standards” (Dauvergne 2000, 308). In other words, their permanent immigration systems ensure that immigrants have already been scrutinized in terms of their economic contribution, health, and/or respect for the law at the permanent residency stage (Dauvergne 2000; Boucher 2016). For instance, Australia sorts its immigrants via the permanent Migration Program and the separate Humanitarian Program for refugees (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014). Since the 1970s, this system has been ostensibly neutral in racial terms, with entry provided to those who could bring sufficient “human capital,” such as skills or educational qualifications, or wished to join immediate family members, with a limited number provided for humanitarian entrants (Walsh 2011). Highly regulated immigration has been accompanied by formal multicultural policies and relatively easy access to citizenship (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014). The fact that permanent residents in Australia have already been thoroughly screened before being granted the right to remain indefinitely (Dauvergne 2000, 287) explains why applicants can be only lightly inspected at the citizenship stage.

Whether integration requirements assist (or hinder) immigrant integration is still largely unknown, making it hard to say whether they are successful or unsuccessful in programmatic terms. For one thing, integration requirements’ effects are difficult to measure (Goodman 2015). Some scholars have suggested that there is little evidence that immigrant integration is actually impacted by formal integration measures in either positive or negative terms (Goodman and Wright 2015). However, others suggest that even simple language and knowledge of society tests have exclusionary effects on some groups, such as lower educated immigrants from certain national backgrounds (van Oers 2014). While gender’s role in cognitive citizenship testing remains inconclusive (van Oers 2014), any requirements involving economic self-sufficiency and employment integration raise the likelihood of gender-specific impacts because the domain of paid work is well established as a gendered basis for citizenship (Lister 2003). Women’s reproductive roles and unpaid care-taking obligations marginalize them as paid workers while facilitating male family members’ wage-earning (Lister 2003; Volpp 2017). Moreover, immigrant admission policies’ gendered structures also perpetuate gender biases (Fincher 1997; Dauvergne 2000; Boucher 2016).

Given the lack of empirical evidence about integration requirements’ effectiveness or impact, why have they become more popular in Europe (Goodman and Wright 2015, 1886)? First, some scholars suggest that citizenship tests are less about integration and more “a tool to control the level and composition of immigration,” and are often “introduced or tightened in response to political or populist pressures to limit immigration in general, or certain kinds of immigration in particular” (Etzioni 2007, 353–54; see also Goodman 2010; Orgad 2010). Second, even when integration requirements are not introduced to limit immigration, they shift the responsibility for integration onto individual migrants, who must prove their active integration into the host society (Kostakopoulou 2010b). This shift not only turns attention to migrants’ individual “merit,” and away from structural constraints, but also allows states to withdraw assistance and support previously available to facilitate integration (Joppke and Eule 2016, 346). Finally, the introduction of integration requirements can be symbolic (Goodman and Wright 2015). For instance, Mourão Permoser (2012, 177) argues, in relation to Austria, that integration requirements were introduced to “send an exclusionary message that the government is tough on immigrants and appease the predominantly anti-immigrant public opinion.”

The Proposed Australian Integration Requirement

In April 2017, the Australian government put forward an overhaul of citizenship law. The bill included, in addition to an integration requirement, other relevant changes. It proposed that the citizenship test, originally introduced in 2007 and comparatively easy and largely knowledge oriented (as opposed to values/morals driven) (Joppke 2013; Levey 2014; Robertson 2015), be made “stronger” and include testing on Australian values (House of Representatives 2017, 24). Under the proposed legislation, those seeking Australian citizenship would have to demonstrate their English language skills separately, as opposed to the current practice in which the citizenship test also doubles as a language test (House of Representatives 2017, 24). Applicants would also have been expected to have spent at least four years as permanent resident prior to application, a significant increase for many applicants (the overall residency requirement was last increased in 2007 from two to four years, with a requirement to hold permanent residency for 12 months) (Betts and Birrell 2007; Rubenstein 2016, chapter 4). Though all these changes would have been significant, none involved the introduction of completely new conditions.

What was, however, novel was the introduction of a specific integration requirement. The proposed requirement demanded that applicants for citizenship by conferral demonstrate that they had “integrated into the Australian community” (Australian Government 2017, 6). The Explanatory Memorandum stated that in assessing integration,

[R]egard may be had to, for example, a person’s employment status, study being undertaken by the person, the person’s involvement with community groups, the school participation of the person’s children, or, adversely, the person’s criminality or conduct that is inconsistent with the Australian values to which they committed throughout their application process. (House of Representatives 2017, 27)

Some aspects of the requirement were not new (e.g., significant criminality was already an obstacle in terms of citizenship acquisition). However, other aspects are striking for both their far-reaching nature and their vague, discretionary wording. Viewed as a whole, the requirement emphasized active economic performance, highlighting employment, income, taxes, and “welfare as a safety net, not a way of life” (Australian Government 2017, 12), though educational integration and civic participation were also mentioned. While the requirement was worded as superficially neutral in racial and gender terms, the demands of economic self-sufficiency and active participation would have carried extra weight for applicants who immigrated on family, as opposed to labor-market, grounds (see discussion further; see also Ellermann 2019). In addition, under the proposal, new citizens would have been required to be culturally aligned, that is, to act consistently with Australian values, and to be good parents. “Australian values” were not listed in the bill, but the Explanatory Memorandum mentioned that Australian values “include the shared values of respect, equality and freedom” (House of Representatives 2017, 22). These values echo those mentioned in the “Australian Values Statement,” the official declaration that all long-term visitors to Australia must sign (also introduced in 2007).

The emphasis on cultural alignment and values also raises questions about the singling out of specific instances of value incompatibility, such as female genital mutilation (FGM), seen in Australia as a Muslim practice (Rogers 2007; Humphrey 2013), and “involvement in gangs and organised crime.” The latter was linked to the ongoing panic over and political instrumentalization of youth crime and alleged gang activity (e.g., the “Apex Gang”), which has focused on refugees from African, particularly Sudanese, backgrounds (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2017; Button 2018; Johnson 2018). Australian discourse on these issues has highlighted a desire to discipline, or to be seen to discipline, racial and religious minorities perceived as not integrated (e.g., by specifically criminalizing FGM; Rogers 2007). Considering how values-based assessments have been previously used to target Australia’s ethnic minorities, especially Muslims, in a coded way (Fozdar and Low 2015; Humphrey 2013), these specific aspects of the integration requirement purposely targeted migrants who arrived as refugees or humanitarian entrants. The issue of what level of evidence was sufficient to show the lack of value alignment (apart from criminal convictions) was not addressed.

The focus on maintaining a work ethic, developing human capital, and displaying civic commitment echoes the Austrian and Danish emphasis on being self-sufficient and having a regular income (or making efforts to do so) (Stern and Valchars 2013; Ersbøll 2015). Interestingly, the ideas about working hard and paying taxes, obeying the law, and engaging in voluntary work with charities also closely echo the proposal made (and eventually abandoned) in the United Kingdom in 2008 (Home Office 2008). However, in the context of the United Kingdom, the proposal about playing an active part in the community was not a compulsory condition for citizenship; rather, it was simply aimed at “incentivizing” or encouraging migrants to act in civic-minded ways to accelerate access to permanent residence and citizenship (Home Office 2008, 26). In the Australian bill, the integration requirement would have been assessed as a hurdle for citizenship acquisition itself, and in relation to individuals who were already permanent residents with a right to stay in Australia indefinitely. The expectation of good citizenship embedded in the integration requirement was, therefore, not merely incentivizing or a theoretical issue (Kymlicka and Normann 1994, 353); it was a tangible legal hurdle.

The integration requirement’s practical operation was left uncertain, and it would have depended on the later adoption of an additional legislative instrument by the Minister (Petrie and Sherrell 2017). However, the details provided suggested a significant shift: that Australia would only provisionally welcome permanent residents as possible new citizens, pending deeper probing of their qualities. The integration requirement’s demands regarding employment, respect for the law, and not overusing welfare, together with demands of cultural fit and core value coherence, would have gone much further than any other settlement state in setting a normative citizenship agenda of showing appropriate activities, and not just knowledge (Joppke 2013; Dauvergne 2016). Framing integration as a requirement that all permanent residents must satisfy would have brought Australia closer to the citizenship expectations of much more exclusive European regimes. Such a shift toward Europe is remarkable, as Australia is not just a traditional country of immigration but also continues to solicit and admit permanent immigrants in large numbers (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014). The proposal, therefore, implied a potentially radical change of course for Australia and its permanent residents.

The Programmatic Change: The Integration Requirement’s Likely Impact

Given the indications that the proposal aimed to limit citizenship to those who could show appropriate integration activity, its likely material effects are relevant for understanding the scope of the government’s failure. Though the proposal’s failure means that its implementation cannot be assessed, the change’s likely outcomes can be examined by considering their applications vis-à-vis the various permanent immigration categories, as outlined further. This assessment of the programmatic dimension will also shed light on the processual and political aspects of the proposal’s failure. The analysis here utilizes immigration and census data to highlight the role of entry stream, nationality, and gender, which are major factors in both sorting migrants into entry streams and affecting migrants’ economic integration and citizenship, in shaping the effects of the change (Fincher 1997; Rubenstein 2016). As will be shown, the intersection of migrant origin and gender is a particularly potent indicator of likely difficulties in demonstrating integration.

Filtered and Sorted: Understanding Australia’s Immigration Categories

Australia filters its migrants via the permanent Migration Program, which is divided into skill and family streams, and the separate Humanitarian Program for refugees and others in humanitarian need (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014). Though Australia has, since the 1990s, shifted toward a more flexible and deregulated guest–worker model, with an increase in temporary migration by international students, working holidaymakers, and workers on temporary visas (Mares 2012; Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014; Boucher 2016), the focus here is on permanent categories, as only those on permanent visas can apply for citizenship in Australia.

The skilled stream of the permanent Migration Program (largely composed of employer-nominated and general skilled migration categories) formed about two thirds (111,099 places) of Australia’s overall migrant intake of over 162,000 permanent places in 2017–18 (Department of Home Affairs [DHA] 2018a). Most visa grants are, therefore, underpinned by the economy’s perceived needs, reflecting a transformation in Australia’s immigration policy over the last 30 years, which has seen permanent migration shift from family migration toward high-skilled migrants who are well educated, fluent in English, self-sufficient, and deemed easily integrated (Walsh 2011; DHA 2018b). Primary applicants in the skilled permanent stream are chosen on the basis of apparently neutral criteria such as educational qualifications and employment experience. Partners and dependent children may join the primary migrant as secondary applicants (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014). The largest numbers of immigrants in the skilled category come from India, followed by China and the United Kingdom (Department of Immigration and Border Protection [DIBP] 2016, 2017a). Though almost half the visas in this category go to women (DIBP 2016, 18), only about a third of primary migrants are women (DIBP 2017a). The skilled selection criteria are more likely to be met by male applicants, with traditionally greater access to education and employment, whereas women are more likely to have uneven career trajectories (due to care-giving and/or part-time work) (Dauvergne 2000; Boucher 2016).

The remaining third of the Migration Program is composed mostly of the family stream (47,732 visas in 2017–18; DHA 2018a). Australia’s family migration policies have become much more restrictive since the 1990s (McDonald 2013; Boucher 2016). Currently, 83 percent of family stream visas are granted to partners (spouse and fiancé visas) (DHA 2018a). Family migration has been dominated by women, reflecting their allocation by the migration program as “family makers and additions to male skilled workers” (Fincher 1997, 226; see also Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014). China is the largest origin country for family migrants, with India, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and Vietnam making up the other top-five origin countries (DIBP 2016, 2017a). Family migrants’ entry is formally structured via their dependency on the sponsor, and they are not assessed on their skills (qualifications, English language proficiency, etc.). However, 60–70 percent of family-stream primary migrants (and indeed 70–80 percent of skilled-stream secondary migrants) in recent years have had post-school qualifications (Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014, 5). Whether family migrants actually participate in the labor force depends on their skills, language proficiency, and, because the stream is so gendered, the presence of children (as women are disproportionately involved in unpaid care-giving work — see discussion below).

The much smaller Humanitarian Program provides access for refugees and others granted entry on humanitarian grounds. While the spontaneous arrival and mandatory detention of asylum-seekers remain controversial (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014, 136), the yearly numbers of the established resettlement program, which admits UNHCR-screened refugees, have been stable, around or over 13,000 for some time (Phillips 2017). In 2017–18, out of 16,250 humanitarian visas, about 56 percent were granted to persons born in the Middle East, 26 percent to persons born in Asia, and 18 percent to persons born in Africa (DHA 2018b). The proportion of males and females granted visas has remained steady at around 50 percent (DHA 2018b; there is also a small quota for Vulnerable Women and Children). Refugees arriving through the resettlement program receive an assistance package, including English language tuition and settlement services, aiming to help them integrate (Fozdar and Hartley 2014). Partners in the humanitarian category, most of whom are women, have lower education levels compared to skilled and family streams (McDonald 2013; Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014).

Who Could Demonstrate Integration?

This section first examines the condition that those who “can work are working, actively looking for work” (and paying taxes and not relying on welfare), as this economic aspect is at the core of the proposed legislation’s integration requirement. It then examines the other aspects, including studying, volunteering, and values.

Demonstrating economic integration would have been easiest for those admitted under the sizeable skill stream, and who are chosen on the basis of criteria such as educational qualifications and employment experience (ABS 2018a). In particular, primary applicants (usually men) are likely to be able to demonstrate economic integration because just as Australia’s overall labor-force participation rates are higher for men (70.9 percent for men and 60.4 percent for women, Workplace Gender Equality Agency 2018), migrants’ labor-force participation rates are higher for men as well. For instance, of migrants who arrived between 2006 and 2016, 90 percent of men who had already obtained citizenship were employed, compared with 71 percent of women; the figures were 86 percent for men and 58 percent for women on permanent visas, and 74 percent for men and 54 percent for women on temporary visas (ABS 2018b). However, even skilled migrants may not be able to demonstrate economic integration: around one third (31 percent) of recent migrants who have been employed in Australia reported difficulty finding their first job (ABS 2018b). While employer-nominated migrants are more likely to be employed, those in the general skilled migration category are not guaranteed a job. Equally important, downward occupational mobility and difficulties in finding work replicate a hierarchy of birthplace: employment integration is harder for those from non-English-speaking backgrounds, especially from non-European countries, than for those from English-speaking states (Colic-Peisker 2011).

The gender disparity in the skilled stream, whereby women, many of whom came as secondary applicants, find economic integration harder, persists for many reasons. First, unlike the primary applicant, skilled-stream partners arrive as dependents who are not selected on the basis of skills or matched with employers (Castles, Vasta, and Ozkul 2014). Similarly, having young children significantly reduces the likelihood of female (but not male) partners being in paid work (Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014). Though there are differences between migrant groups, female migrants, just like Australian-born women, continue to undertake substantially more unpaid work in the home than men do and disproportionately carry responsibility for unpaid child care (Ting, Perales, and Baxter 2016; ABS 2017). Women’s labor-participation rates also vary significantly in terms of their origin region (McDonald 2013; Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014). The Migration Program, which largely leaves skilled stream migrants to find their own way in the labor market, particularly exposes non-English-speaking migrant women to downward occupational mobility because of gender-specific barriers such as care responsibilities, cultural expectations, and lack of resources (O’Dwyer and Colic-Peisker 2016; Ressia, Strachan, and Bailey 2017; Webb 2015b). Female migrants often prioritize their children’s integration over their own work prospects, and as a result, migration can exacerbate gender imbalances and lead to “disrupted careers, intensification of domestic responsibilities and a re-feminisation of health and human service work” (Webb 2015b, 27; see also Ho 2006).

This gendered picture of employment is complemented by the family migration stream, a category dominated by women as spouses entering on the basis of their family relationship with their sponsor in Australia (i.e., as “wife import”) (Dauvergne 2000, 296). Like migrants admitted as skilled-category partners, these migrants arrive unscreened for economic attributes, such as fluency in English and recognized qualifications. However, unlike skilled-stream partners who are often also skilled, partners arriving through the family migration stream have lower labor-market participation and income, especially for recent arrivals (Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014; O’Dwyer and Colic-Peisker 2016). Their lesser economic integration is partly due to their predictable focus on the family. It is again relevant that lack of childcare is a barrier to mothers’ employment (ABS 2017), and that Australian employers show a marked preference for migrants with advanced English language ability, education from OECD countries, and/or Australian degrees (Colic-Peisker 2011). Lack of English language skills is a particularly significant barrier for partner migrants (Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014). Moreover, even educated family-stream migrants may be at a disadvantage. As Webb (2015a, 274) puts it, “recognition of migrants’ skills is embedded in social processes and values, which are infused by gatekeeper’s perceptions and evaluation of migrants’ social and cultural background, gender, ethnicity and previous work context — their social position and status.”

Finally, the integration requirement’s economic aspect would have had its starkest implications for humanitarian entrants, who form a much smaller group that is, like family migrants, diverse and largely unscreened for human-capital attributes. Humanitarian entrants experience much worse employment outcomes than skilled and family migrants in Australia, with an employment rate of under 50 percent for men and much lower for women (ABS 2018a; see also Hugo 2014). This lack of economic integration is unsurprising, as refugees arrive with less English language fluency, educational experience, and family support, and they suffer from poorer mental and physical health (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury 2007). Significantly, refugees are consigned to low-status and low-paid jobs that locals avoid, regardless of their formal qualifications and skills (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury 2006). In other words, refugees, particularly those who are visibly different from the white-Anglo majority, routinely face high levels of social exclusion and discrimination, and though refugee women often experience multiple marginalizations, refugee men also face significant obstacles in attaining paid work (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury 2007; Correa-Velez, Spaaij, and Upham 2012; Hebbani and Colic-Peisker 2012; Correa-Velez, Barnett, and Gifford 2015).

Despite a number of significant impediments to economic participation and labor-market integration, including language, education, structural disadvantage, and discrimination, refugees’ labor-market performance converges toward that of Australia-born residents over time (Hugo 2014). High proportions of humanitarian arrivals, including women, are involved in training and education, which may help demonstrate educational integration even in the absence of economic integration (McDonald 2013; Hugo 2014; Khoo, McDonald, and Edgar 2014). However, refugee youth’s educational participation is hampered by lower levels of previous schooling, especially for girls, and experiences of discrimination, which increase the likelihood of not completing secondary education (Correa-Velez et al. 2017). Humanitarian entrants often face significant challenges in post-secondary education as well. These challenges include language problems (for students whose first language is not English), lack of familiarity with Western academic expectations, financial pressures, housing problems, marginalization caused by forced migration, and conflicting community/family expectations regarding forms of participation/support that take time away from study (Harris and Marlowe 2011; Correa-Velez, Spaaij, and Upham 2012). Despite a strong desire to belong in Australian society, many humanitarian entrants experience multiple subtle forms of exclusion that stand in the way of educational integration (Fozdar and Hartley 2014; Correa-Velez et al. 2017).

Inability to show economic integration (or ongoing study) to fulfil the integration requirement would not have automatically disqualified citizenship applicants. They could alternatively show integration in other areas, most notably via involvement in community or voluntary organizations. This civic participation aspect is significant because it is the only part of the integration requirement that emphasized civil-society involvement (Kymlicka and Norman 1994, 363), and because it acknowledges that there is more to citizenship than working/paying taxes (Shachar 2011, 137). It seemed, however, to be framed as the alternative to paid employment (a “mummy track” perhaps) rather than as something that everyone should do (Australian Government 2017). However, a weaker position in the labor market does not necessarily translate into better or increased ability to participate in civil society, as census data on volunteering confirm. While women are slightly more likely than men to volunteer (at 38 percent versus 34 percent), the rates were in fact highest for those in employment, particularly for professionals and managers, suggesting a class dimension in the civic participation aspect (ABS 2010). Volunteering rates for those not speaking English at home were lower than average, as was the rate for those in poor health, unemployed, on benefits, or with a disability (ABS 2010). Those with pressing family commitments find it difficult to find time for volunteering, and while older children encourage volunteering, younger ones inhibit it (Taniguchi 2006; Gray, Khoo, and Reimondos 2012). The civic participation criterion, therefore, suggests that it may have been hard for many immigrants, including many women, to demonstrate integration in this way.

The integration requirement’s remaining aspects, such as school absenteeism, criminality (an already-existing ground of exclusion), excessive welfare dependency, or conduct “inconsistent with the Australian values” (including “domestic or family violence, criminality including procuring or facilitating FMG and involvement in gangs”), raise rarer but significant hurdles. What constitutes “excessive” welfare dependency is not defined. As discussed earlier, the specific mention of FGM and involvement in gangs instrumentalize stereotypes surrounding African/Muslim immigrants (Rogers 2007; Moran 2011). These exclusions’ practical application also raises obvious gender questions. For instance, children’s gang involvement and inadequate school attendance, as well as parents’ facilitation of FGM being performed on children, all relate to immigrants roles’ as parents expected to protect and keep children out of trouble. Expectations of good parenting, however, are gendered, racialized, and classed: in particular, the ideal of the educated, middle-class mother is constructed in direct opposition to the figure of the welfare-dependent, negligent mother (Ramsay 2016). Therefore, the parenting dimension targets the conduct of refugee women and/or women of African background with large families and gendered responsibilities for family welfare (Hebbani and Colic-Peisker 2012). While migrant parents, and in particular women, are expected to ensure their children stay out of trouble, refugees’ actual ability to ensure children’s good behavior may be deeply compromised due to trauma, loss of extended family support, and weakened parental authority (Levi 2014; Lewig, Arney, and Salveron 2010).

Finally, domestic or family violence as an exclusion ground is interesting, as such violence is hardly unique to immigrants (Menjívar and Salcido 2002, 901) and, instead, is a widespread problem in Australia (State of Victoria 2016). It is, therefore, difficult to assess the likely impacts of this exclusion ground. Certainly, violence in the home can make it more difficult for victims to “demonstrate integration” in other ways because of economic and social isolation (State of Victoria 2016). Moreover, humanitarian entrants may be impacted by additional stress factors contributing to family violence, such as experiences of trauma, economic marginalization, or conflicts about parenting (Lewig, Arney, and Salveron 2010; Fisher 2013), increasing their likelihood of being caught by this exclusion ground. Moreover, this requirement might also have made women more reluctant to report family violence if it would make their family members ineligible for citizenship (Refugee Council 2017).² Some of this vulnerability is due to the migration system itself: sponsored family members’ legal dependency and the fact that they are initially granted a temporary visa create particularly potent disincentives for reporting family violence (State of Victoria 2016, 109–11). Therefore, this aspect of the integration requirement may have had very negative impacts on those migrant women who are already most vulnerable.

To sum up, then, the most likely material outcome of the integration requirement would have been to favor primary skilled migrants in the sizeable skill stream, who were more likely to hold a record of economic integration and could tap into existing narratives of good citizenship as economic productivity (Fozdar and Spittles 2010; Ellermann 2019). The criteria would have been much more onerous for people not admitted on the basis of human-capital criteria (skills, language proficiency, etc.) and facing discrimination in the labor market, such as some family migrants and refugees. Immigrants with caring responsibilities (typically women), whose domestic work functions as the precondition for their spouses’ economic integration, would have been expected to prove their worth through desirable civic activities, which would have been difficult for many. Finally, incompatibility with “Australian values” would likely have disproportionately excluded some humanitarian entrants (and increased the vulnerabilities of those impacted by domestic violence). In programmatic terms, the integration requirement would have significantly changed citizenship acquisition into a process in which the skilled stream’s class-based logic was applied to those admitted on family/humanitarian grounds (Ellermann 2019). The government’s inability to effect this change, therefore, constituted a significant setback to its citizenship agenda.

The Process-related and Political Dimensions of the Proposal’s Failure

The previous section showed that integration proposal would have been potentially onerous for all permanent immigrants and, in favoring a self-sufficient neoliberal subject who posed no social or economic burdens, would have made citizenship much harder to acquire for some applicants. This section argues that the integration proposal’s nature and magnitude contributed to the government’s failure to gain support and legitimacy for the proposal, but also help make sense of the political reasons behind the proposal’s introduction in the first place.

In terms of process — that is, “the stages of policy-making in which issues emerge and are framed, options are explored, interests are consulted and decisions made” (Marsh and McConnell 2010, 572), the government’s failure to pass the integration requirement can be linked to its reticence at the policy-formulation stage to explain why a change of this magnitude was suddenly necessary. Neither the bill nor the Explanatory Memorandum gave any clues about the government’s motivation for introducing the requirement (House of Representatives 2017). The bill was, however, preceded by a National Consultation to “improve understanding of the privileges and responsibilities of Australian citizenship,” which in turn led to the report Australian Citizenship. Your Right, Your Responsibility (Australian Government 2015). This report contained some relevant remarks, but only one about integration: “Some suggested that the ability of new arrivals to ‘integrate’ into the Australian community needed to be examined and considered before offering them Australian citizenship” (Australian Government 2015, 17). No further details were given to support the implication that “unintegrated” applicants had been admitted to citizenship. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP; now DHA), arguing in support of the changes, stated in 2017 that “integration is a core challenge in liberal democracies,” but then noted that across almost all integration indicators, “Australia compares favorably to other OECD countries” (DIBP 2017b, 70). While the Department referred to the “failure of integration” in Europe and relied on the research of Goodman (2010) to support this claim, its case for reform was simply that Australia “does not currently test individual immigrants for integration” (DIBP 2017b, 72).

In terms of building support for the integration requirement, the fact that the government put forward no evidence about existing problems with integration undermined the proposal’s legitimacy, with the main opposition party labelling the bill an “overreach” (Burke 2017) and another accusing the government of trying to “radically redefine citizenship” (McKim 2017). The Australian government never explained how the integration requirement would have addressed any existing issues, and the bill did not include an impact assessment or commentary on why Australia needed to copy this restrictive change from Europe (Commonwealth of Australia 2017). While the DIBP referred to Europe’s problems with integration (DIBP 2017b, 72), it did not analyze the causes of such problems against an Australian context. In fact, Australia already to a great extent seeks to ensure its immigrants bring social capital and demand no state support (Walsh 2011). It prioritizes economic migration over other forms and, since the 1990s, has expected most permanent migrants to be self-sufficient, having increasingly excluded permanent residents from a range of welfare payments (Boucher 2014; Walsh 2014; Parliament of Australia 2018). The government, therefore, never showed why an integration requirement should augment this logic’s already-exclusionary potential by applying it even more strongly.

While no one provided evidence about the problems the integration requirement would solve, refugee-serving organizations anticipated its detrimental effects and expressed “deep concern” that the bill might “undermine social cohesion, and deny citizenship to those who value it most highly” (Refugee Council 2017). The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which reported on the entire bill in August 2017, raised a number of concerns about the proposal, such as its potential to discriminate “on the basis of disability, nationality, religion, race or sex,” and noted that “[m]any Australians may experience unemployment, or may not complete study, or may face difficulties with their children’s school participation. It is not evident why it is necessary to exclude permanent residents from Australian citizenship on these grounds” (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights 2017, 11). Such criticisms further raised questions about why the government wanted to make such a significant change. However, at no stage of the formulation process did the government explain why this specific requirement was necessary.

Politically, this refusal to explain or justify the Australian government’s policy to dramatically limit access citizenship was a crucial factor contributing to the overall failure to build support for the integration requirement and, indeed, the bill as whole. Opposition parties’ spokespeople on citizenship matters quickly dismissed the proposal, arguing it was “not based on policy” (Burke 2017) and would “destabilise thousands of families” (McKim 2017). Once it became clear that other political parties had significant reservations about the bill’s content and sudden introduction, the government’s ability (or, possibly, willingness) to negotiate with other parties to advance the bill in the Senate was limited (Hutchens 2017). The bill was eventually discharged without effect in October 2017. Though the government repeatedly stated it was looking to making some adjustments to the package with the aim of reintroducing the bill and ensuring its adoption (Hutchens 2017, Kainth 2018), it made no headway in these efforts before the May 2019 election. Nor did the government commence any further public consultation about the subject matter or canvass compromises it was willing to make to ensure the bill’s passage.

The political dimension of the failed integration requirement should also be assessed in terms Australia’s overall political context regarding immigration. The proposal’s political setting was one in which immigration had become more politically contested and a source of internal rivalries inside the Australian government (Button 2018). Some commentators suggested that the bill may have been a concession to the government’s internal immigration critics, including the then Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, and intended to secure (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) the Prime Minister’s position (Benson and Baxendale 2017). In similar fashion, the bill may have been intended, as in some European states (Mourão Permoser 2012), as a signal that despite continuing permanent immigration (DHA 2018a), the Australian government was controlling issues related to immigration, including integration and access to citizenship. The major opposition party’s immigration spokesperson alluded to these motivations as a possible explanation for the bill’s introduction and accused the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection of trying to “play games” with “the thing that defines who we are as a nation” (Burke 2017).

Insofar, then, as there is “a particular speculation among scholars over the question of whether civic integration is designed to be a real solution to repair integration problems or whether civic integration is a symbolic gesture” (Goodman and Wright 2015, 1887), the political context of this proposed Australian bill highlights the superficiality of the government’s efforts to get it accepted and suggests that in the Australian case, this push for immigrant civic integration was mostly a “symbolic gesture.” As discussed earlier, the government presented no evidence to explain what problems this integration requirement would solve. Moreover, the proposed integration requirement, indeed the entire citizenship overhaul, disappeared promptly after the right-wing government (somewhat surprisingly) secured re-election in May 2019. Yet upon re-election, the government stood a better chance to get a citizenship bill through the Senate than before (Killoran 2019). That the ambitious project to overhaul citizenship was unceremoniously abandoned upon electoral victory supports the claim that the bill’s function was largely symbolic. It is beyond this article’s scope to analyze whether the proposed integration requirement, as part of the broader citizenship package, contributed to the government’s re-election. However, it is at least possible that although the policy may have been unsuccessful in advancing the government’s actual citizenship program, its failure may have been more ambiguous in terms of assisting the government’s reputation and/or electoral prospects.

Conclusion

Civic integration policies show no signs of letting up. If anything, existing policies are becoming more entrenched and more states, from Europe to Australia to the USA, are revisiting possibilities of and strategies for membership promotion. (Goodman and Wright 2015, 1903)

The proposed integration requirement analyzed in this article signaled a potentially dramatic change in citizenship criteria in Australia. Its adoption would have made it harder for many immigrants to become citizens, and some would have been excluded altogether on the basis of criteria that many Australian citizens do not meet. Dauvergne (2000, 308) argued nearly 20 years ago that in traditional countries of immigration, citizenship law had relatively little work to do, as migration law already screened migrants for desirable attributes. Indeed, in Australia, it remains reasonably straightforward for permanent residents to acquire citizenship (Markus 2017), regardless of whether they were admitted as skilled workers, family migrants, or refugees. However, with the introduction of the proposed integration requirement, Australian citizenship would have started to operate independently as a more exclusionary mechanism. In affirming the logic of the skilled stream, the integration requirement would have made pathways to citizenship longer, while creating more space for “non-ideal” permanent residents to fail if they could not find jobs, got sick, looked after children, or could not find the energy and resources to volunteer. Despite the language of integration, the requirement would have turned citizenship into a mechanism of control, ensuring that immigrants continued to be on their best behavior for years after gaining permanent residency, and that they strived toward economic agency and self-sufficiency as pre-conditions for citizenship’s protections.

While integration requirements have been successfully introduced in some European states, the Australian case is one in which an integration requirement failed to gain favor. This article has argued that the bill’s potential impacts were far-reaching, and that it failed in part because the change’s nature and magnitude were never explained in a way that would have secured legitimacy for the proposal and attracted support for it. Whether the bill was also a failure in purely political terms is somewhat more ambiguous, as the government may have introduced the proposal, at least in part, as a symbolic measure seeking to reassure the government’s internal critics, or the Australian public, of the government’s ability and desire to control immigration. The proposal’s introduction was consistent with both the renewed emphasis in European states on making immigrants responsible for their integration and the use of integration requirements to signal restrictiveness, not just to immigrants, but to the public concerned about immigration and social cohesion (Mourão Permoser 2012; Joppke and Eule 2016). However, the Australian government did not prepare the ground for this change or provide evidence regarding the existence of a European-style integration crisis that needed this solution.

The attempted introduction of integration requirements in Australia is a significant sign that political consensus on the benefits of long-standing permanent immigration may be fracturing in settler states, challenging both their reputation as open to immigration and the security of their permanent residents. To understand the processes through which settler states learn from Europe (and vice versa), future studies must examine the conditions under which such policy transfers occur. Social, economic, political, and ideological differences between regional and national contexts matter, and they should be factored into future work on this topic. The Australian case also merits more research into the positive and negative lessons that can be drawn about when and under what circumstances immigration policy travels well. Though there are, of course, limitations in drawing broad conclusions from a single case, this article’s findings indicate a number of issues that could be further explored. One such issue is the need to understand the role of contested political priorities in shaping immigration policy; another is the need to learn from specific failures by asking in which way or from whose perspective policy transfers succeed or fail. Questions also remain about the extent to which integration requirements function to screen immigrants in ways that control minorities and legitimize their differential treatment. These questions underscore the importance of further research into when and why immigration policy innovations do and do not cross continents.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Heli Askola

Notes

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