Integration duties in the European Union: Four models

Abstract

Integration is becoming increasingly important in law, due to the growing involvement of the legislative, executive and judicial powers at European, national, regional and local levels. This phenomenon concerns third-country nationals and EU citizens, despite the fundamentally different legal regimes applicable to these groups. In this article, I discuss the expansion of integration duties and the different legal mechanisms which they are based on. I propose four conditions- and obligations-based integration models likely to be found in EU law and national laws: the symbolic model, the meritocratic model, the activation model and the selective model. From a legal perspective, identifying these integration mechanisms is essential for assessing compliance with fundamental rights and EU law. Moreover, such a typology is likely to help researchers, policy-makers and the public obtain a better sense of how the conception of integration evolves in our societies and in the legal field in particular. I conclude by briefly sketching a common trend which I observed throughout the four models: they are imbued with a strong socioeconomic dimension hindering the socioeconomically underprivileged categories.