One of the most persistent illusions in modern migration policy is the belief that integration happens automatically. Give people time, access to work, and legal protection, and integration will follow. Europe has built its entire migration framework on this assumption—and it is now paying the price.
The European Union’s migration policies have focused relentlessly on procedures: how to admit, process, relocate, or return migrants. What they have consistently failed to do is treat integration as a binding civic obligation. Instead, integration has been left to chance, goodwill, or economic absorption. The result is not coexistence, but fragmentation.
Europe’s experience shows a hard truth: integration does not happen by accident. When it is optional, it becomes selective. When it is selective, it produces parallel societies rather than shared ones. And when parallel societies emerge, social cohesion erodes—quietly at first, then visibly.
At the heart of the problem lies a conceptual error. European policymakers have largely equated integration with employment. If a migrant works, pays taxes, and avoids criminal conduct, integration is assumed to be underway. But work alone does not integrate. Employment can provide income, not belonging. It does not ensure linguistic competence, civic loyalty, respect for legal norms, or identification with constitutional values.
Historically, the United States understood this. American immigration was never based solely on labor needs. It was tied—sometimes imperfectly, but deliberately—to civic assimilation: language acquisition, acceptance of constitutional principles, and adherence to shared rules. Integration was not merely encouraged; it was expected.
Europe abandoned this expectation without replacing it with anything coherent. Multicultural tolerance became a substitute for integration, and neutrality replaced authority. The state stopped asking newcomers to adapt meaningfully to the host society, assuming that diversity itself would generate cohesion. It did not.
When integration is not required, the state loses its ability to shape outcomes. Social norms cease to be shared. Legal rules are respected selectively. Trust between communities weakens. Native populations perceive loss of control, while migrants themselves are left without clear expectations or pathways to belonging. The vacuum is filled not by inclusion, but by resentment—on all sides.
The consequences are now evident across Europe. Urban segregation has intensified. Political polarization has increased. Immigration has become a permanent source of instability rather than renewal. Governments respond by tightening procedures and expanding enforcement, but these are downstream reactions. They address symptoms, not causes.
From an American perspective, this matters deeply. The United States is engaged in its own debate over assimilation versus multiculturalism, enforcement versus accommodation. Europe offers a cautionary tale. You can expand rights indefinitely, but without obligations, rights lose their integrative function. They become transactional, not transformative.
Integration is not a moral gesture. It is a governance requirement. States that fail to define and demand it do not become more open—they become more fragile. Social fragmentation is not the result of diversity itself, but of diversity without a common civic framework.
Europe’s mistake was not compassion. It was ambiguity. By refusing to define what integration means—and by declining to require it—the EU allowed migration to drift away from state authority and social cohesion. The outcome was predictable.
For the United States, the lesson is clear. A migration system that does not demand integration will not remain humane or stable. It will eventually harden, polarize, and radicalize. Integration must be explicit, enforceable, and central—or societies will fragment, and the political backlash will follow.
Fabio Loscerbo
Attorney at Law – Policy Advocate
EU Transparency Register ID 280782895721-36
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