Abstract

Excerpted From: Jamie Draper, Enclaves for the Excluded, 29 Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 283 (January, 2025) (79 Footnotes) (Full Document)

In western liberal democracies, and especially in Europe, the politics of immigration is intertwined with the politics of integration. Approaches to integration vary across national contexts, but there are also significant points of convergence. One such point of convergence is the widely held view that immigrants have a duty to integrate in receiving societies. In the United Kingdom, for example, successive Labour and Conservative governments have made the integration of immigrants a political priority in response to popular anxiety about immigrant communities being disconnected from the social and cultural mainstream. In October 2023, Suella Braverman, then home secretary, chastised immigrants for living “parallel lives” and “not taking part in British life.”

At the same time as they are expected to integrate, members of some immigrant communities are viewed and treated as inferiors in receiving societies. Anti-immigrant attitudes are widespread in Europe in general, but they are especially pronounced for some immigrant communities in particular--typically, predominantly Muslim ethnic minority communities. Anti-immigrant attitudes are expressed both in media discourse and in a political culture in which immigrant minorities are stigmatized and represented as a civilizational threat. And crucially, it is often precisely those immigrant communities that are most stigmatized who are the primary addressees of the demand to integrate.

This paper investigates the claim that immigrants have a duty to integrate in light of the fact that many immigrants who are expected to integrate are stigmatized in receiving societies. I argue that immigrant minorities who face a particular kind of relational inequality--social exclusion--have a moral permission to form enclaves. Enclaves, as I understand them here, conflict with at least some putative duties to integrate. So my argument suggests that immigrants who face social exclusion have, at most, limited duties to integrate.

My defense of enclaves for the excluded involves a positive argument and a negative argument. Positively, I argue that enclaves can play an important role in supporting the self-respect of members of socially excluded groups. Social exclusion is a threat to self-respect, and enclaves can have a protective function for those whose self-respect is threatened in this way. Negatively, I argue social exclusion makes the duty to integrate unreasonably burdensome. I also argue that even if integration is a genuine duty, it cannot be permissibly enforced as a social expectation vis-à-vis socially excluded immigrants, because members of dominant social groups lack the standing to blame socially excluded immigrants for failing to integrate.

But while I argue that socially excluded immigrants have only limited duties to integrate, I also accept that integration can be an important way of combatting relational inequality. My argument thus has a pessimistic conclusion: social exclusion means that immigrant minorities have at best only limited duties to integrate, but it is in the context of social exclusion that integration is particularly valuable.

My focus in this paper is on the integration of immigrants in particular, and I focus on first-generation, voluntary immigrants. To the extent that they face both social exclusion and the demand for integration, however, my argument also applies to second- and third-generation immigrants. It may also extend to other, nonimmigration contexts in which minorities face both social exclusion and the demand for integration, such as racial segregation in the United States, although there are clearly significant differences between these contexts. But the primary context that motivates my inquiry is that which Sune Lagaard calls “euro-multiculturalism,” in which it is immigrant communities-- typically ethnic and religious minorities--who are the primary addressees of demands to integrate. And as we will see, there is an objection to my argument that applies to first-generation, voluntary immigrants in particular: that those who have migrated voluntarily have waived their moral permission to form enclaves. Voluntary immigrants thus represent a hard case for my argument. If I can show that voluntary immigrants have a moral permission to form enclaves when they face social exclusion, then this bears well on the prospects for my argument more generally.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, in section 1, I clarify three central concepts involved in my argument: integration, enclaves, and social exclusion. Then, I make the positive and negative arguments for my central claim: the positive argument from self-respect (section 2.1) and the negative argument from unreasonable burdens and standing (section 2.2). I then consider two objections to my argument: that those who have migrated voluntarily have waived their moral permission to engage in enclave formation (section 3.1) and that enclaves may hinder the pursuit of relational equality (section 3.2). Finally, in section 4, I conclude by highlighting a virtue of my argument and an upshot of my argument for debates about immigrant integration.

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Immigrants are typically expected to participate in social integration in their receiving societies. But some immigrant minorities are subject to this expectation while at the same time being placed in an inferior social position in a pervasive hierarchy of esteem. In this paper, I have argued that those in this position--socially excluded immigrant minorities--have a moral permission to form enclaves, which means that they have only limited duties to participate in social integration. Positively, enclaves can have a protective function against the threats to self-respect involved in social exclusion. Negatively, social exclusion makes the putative duty to integrate unreasonably burdensome. And further, social integration cannot be justified as a social expectation because members of dominant majority groups lack the standing to blame socially excluded immigrant minorities for failures to integrate.

However, it is true that social integration is an important tool for combatting relational inequality. This makes my argument a pessimistic one: social exclusion both makes it the case that socially excluded immigrant minorities have only limited duties to participate in integration and makes it all the more important that they do so, if we are to achieve relational equality. We may hope that socially excluded immigrants integrate, and the fact that many do so may be a cause for celebration. But the integration of socially excluded immigrant minorities is not something that we can legitimately expect, and when socially excluded immigrants do participate in integration, they are doing something supererogatory.

One attractive feature of this defense of enclaves is that it is asymmetric: it applies only to members of socially excluded groups and not to members of social groups who do not face social exclusion. These features of my account enable it to avoid yielding implausible judgments about other cases of enclave formation that do not meet these conditions. Consider, for example, affluent white Americans who cluster together in gated communities. Geographers and sociologists have pointed out that despite being facially neutral, gated communities enable affluent white Americans to engage in social closure by excluding minority groups. This kind of enclave formation cannot be justified by my defense of enclaves. Because affluent white Americans do not face social exclusion, they do not have a justification for engaging in enclave formation on the basis of self-respect. My argument thus avoids the implausible conclusion that members of dominant majority groups have a moral permission to form enclaves.

One upshot of my argument is that debates about immigrant integration should be much more focused on the duties of members of receiving societies than on the duties of immigrants. It suggests that the onus is on members of dominant social groups who uphold hierarchies of esteem that put some immigrants in an inferior social position to change their behaviors. It is only when immigrant minorities do not face social exclusion that they can be held to the expectation that they should participate in social integration.