Clara Canales Gutierrez and Bono Siebelink

Integration Guru

With the incoming of refugees and migrants to Germany since 2015, the attitude towards integration has been reconsidered. The German government is taking measures to accommodate and integrate non-EU-foreigners, by offering integration courses and encouraging entry to the labour market. The shift of attitude lies in the migrants’ prospect of staying long-term in Germany, due to which integration becomes an investment, as migrants are expected to “return the favor” in the future.

On a social level, integration has turned into a trend. Civic engagement and the ‘welcoming culture’ have gained importance as informal means of integration in Germany, while the fundamental objectives of this integration are not critically assessed. The German government sells its integration programs to the German citizens and the international community, and carefully protects the inviolability of its economy and society. 

The life-style blog Integration Guru addresses the digression from the essential humanitarian claim of integration, by portraying the incoherence to the idea of ‘successful integration’. This involves concepts such as the German Leitkultur, the apparent commercialisation and commodification of integration and the lack of discourse about the way migrants themselves desire to integrate. Instead of targeting the conceptual validity of integration, the satirical blog format attempts to grapple with the media attention spent on integration and the lack of reflection in its institutional practice. The format explicitly addresses this incoherence in an exaggerated manner.

Website, 2017