1 Immigration, Social Cohesion, and Naturalisation1

Concerns about ’social cohesion ’ are often advanced as reasons for a restrictive immigration policy, the idea being that certain kinds of immigration disrupts the ‘cohesion ’ of the receiving society and thereby undermines various valuable ends for which social cohesion is a precondition, e.g. a welfare state or deliberative democracy. The standard appeal to social cohesion in relation to immigration concerns admittance and residence. But social cohesion is sometimes also invoked as a relevant concern in relation to a subsequent step in the immigration process, namely the attainment of citizenship in the state by means of naturalisation. In recent years many western states have tightened conditions for naturalisation, and introduced tougher language requirements and tests supposed to secure that only applicants with appropriate knowledge about the receiving society actually can become citizens. The paper discusses how concerns for social cohesion might function as part of justifications of such restrictive naturalisation requirements. The paper distinguishes between different meanings of ‘social cohesion ’ and argues that standard concerns with generalised social trust do not connect with issues of naturalisation at all. Other conceptions of social cohesion do connect with naturalisation, but these are either politically controversial as well as problematic as part of the justification of stricter naturalisation requirements or in fact justify less demanding naturalisation requirements