In Pursuit of Citizenship: Immigrants' Relations to Civil Society

• Author: Kathleen Valtonen
• Pages: 52-63

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FREEDOM AND CONSTRAINT IN CARIBBEAN MIGRATION AND DIASPORA

In Pursuit of Citizenship:

Immigrants’ Relations to Civil Society

KATHLEEN VALTONEN

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IntroductionIntroduction

IntroductionIntroduction

Introduction

Immigrants are persons who have migrated, or moved from one society

to another in order to settle. It has been customary to distinguish

between ‘voluntary’ and ‘forced’ migrants. This distinction is based on

individuals’ reasons for departure from their country of origin, which

generally determines how they are categorized in the destination country.

However, the salience of this distinction might be decreasing with the

increasing awareness that migration dynamics are complex and that migrants

cannot be put into discrete categories.

‘Settlement’ refers to the range of activity undertaken by immigrants as

they seek to become established in the new society. ‘Integration’ is a term

that overlaps with settlement, but has, at its core, the notion that the

individuals, their families and communities are gradually becoming a part of

the social fabric of the new society (see Breton 1992). It embodies the idea

that they are forging links and relations with the formal and informal

institutions of the society. The term ‘integration’ will be used in this

chapter, as it captures important purposeful, goal-oriented and qualitative

aspects of the phenomenon.

My main argument is that immigrants’ participation in the community

and society often takes place for extended periods in institutionally peripheral

zones, rather than within the institutional mainstream. Most empirical,