The Success and Failure of Integration Policy in France and Britain.

During the past 50 years two sets of events have had a profound influence on the development of public policy on immigrant integration. The first is the challenge to public order posed by urban unrest in France in the early 1980s and in Britain beginning in the late 1950s. In each country, the public policy response to this urban crisis involved important elements of multiculturalism as part of a strategy to maintain public order. In each country the public policy response was also influenced by other political consideration of domestic politics, but policies that at least implicitly recognized differentiated community (or "minority") needs and benefits were common to each of these approaches. The second set of events is generally related to the challenge of Islamic terrorism, and the recognition that some of it has domestic roots. In this context, there have been overlapping similarities in the approach of all European countries to questions of immigrant integration. The first similarity has been a movement towards policies of civic integration, and the second, a movement towards anti-discrimination policies. If the first has constrained policies of multiculturalism, the second has given new support and legitimacy to racial and ethnic diversity. Nevertheless, I argue below that national models—or policy paradigms— are still useful for understanding why convergence has been limited, that public philosophies in each country have differentiated both the intention and the approach of integration policy, and that these differences are most evident in the relative success and failure of different integration policies. If criteria by which success of integration is judged on the European level appear to have converged in European standards, national policy approaches have shaped the success of integration programs, sometimes in unexpected and contradictory ways. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]