Asking Those Concerned: How Muslim Migrant Organisations Define Integration. A German-Dutch Comparison

Abstract

This article focuses on the perceptions of Muslim immigrants regarding what might constitute ‘successful integration’ into two Western European countries: Germany and the Netherlands. I conducted qualitative interviews with representatives from Muslim umbrella organisations and reviewed their publications to analyse their definitions of ‘integration’. The results support the assumption that differences in political opportunity structures derived from specific integration policies, as well as national regimes of religious governance, affect the views of Muslim organisations acting in these contexts. In the Netherlands, the Muslim representatives still support a policy of multicultural integration and, first and foremost, the right to preserve their original identities. In contrast, their counterparts in Germany occasionally consider moderate forms of acculturation, including the creation of ‘hybrid’ identities, within the country that receives them. Understanding areas of concordance between immigrant and state representatives within the same national context could pave the way for more constructive and less polarised dialogue between the two groups and might serve as a model for facilitating other types of integration.