Bridging empirical social science and political theory, this book powerfully shows that value-based “integration” is incompatible with liberal democracy, not only because it excludes migrants as Other, but because democracy is-and should be-about contestation rather than shared values.

Saskia Bonjour, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

In this necessary interdisciplinary work, Stefan Manser-Egli deconstructs the “shared values” requirement increasingly used to police citizenship. Drawing deftly on political theory and critical sociology, Illiberal Integrationism demonstrates that granting street-level bureaucrats the power to judge inner convictions creates a problematic double standard between citizens and migrants, ultimately undermining many of the values of liberal democracy-freedom of conscience and expression-that it claims to uphold.

Alexander Sager, Portland State University, USA

lliberal Integrationism offers a powerful, incisive and provocative critique of the dominant paradigm of “migrant integration” that continues to shape academic, political and public debates across Europe and beyond. Challenging the moral imperatives of “migrant integration” and of “shared national values,” Manser-Egli exposes their fundamentally illiberal underpinnings. The book calls for a shift toward democratic contestation grounded in pluralism-a core feature of modern democracy. This stimulating book is not only set to become a key landmark in social theory and contemporary political debate, but will also reshape our understanding of migrant integration.

Janine Dahinden, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

If Jürgen Habermas, in his Tanner Lectures (1986), argued that Switzerland could serve as a model of multicultural federalism for Europe, identifying constitutional patriotism as the benchmark for the inclusion of foreigners, Manser-Egli goes a step further by combining qualitative analysis with political philosophy-particularly liberal democratic theory-to show that Swiss integrationism, centered on “shared values,” is fundamentally illiberal and incompatible with democratic pluralism.

Flora di Donato, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

In an intense conversation between a case study on Switzerland and philosophical problematizations of national citizenship, Manser-Egli's important account demonstrates that however fully the apparatus of integration is turned inside out, apparently emptied of its historical baggage and leaving only the wrap of liberal democratic values, the very concept of value cannot dismantle, and instead continues to insulate, the racial and colonial infrastructure of European borders and citizenships. As this important book shows, a liberal imagination of our togetherness has failed if not expressly refused to actually problematize its claim of historical inevitability beyond admissions of practical inadequacies and past injustices. By forcefully inhabiting the stubborn controversies that surround this claim and through careful engagement with concrete political practices, this book announces our situated responsibilities to think, study, research and act against these containments and separations.

Rogier van Reekum, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands