Jean Monnet Chair for Moritz Jesse: Migration, Integration, and Non-discrimination in Europe
Dr Moritz Jesse, European Institute at Leiden Law School, has been awarded a Jean Monnet Professorship. From November 2023, Moritz will teach bachelor's and master's courses as part of his ‘Migration, Integration, Non-Discrimination in the EU’ project [MIND-EU]. At a later stage, Jesse’s Jean Monnet Chair will also organise a lecture series on immigration and integration addressed not only to an academic public.
Immigration and immigrant integration is discussed in public, politics, and media on a daily basis. Fuelled by current events, immigration pressure on the EU and its Member States remains high. Demographic changes at the same time have resulted in a continuous need for immigrant labour within the EU. In short, discourse about immigration and immigrant integration will not cease in the foreseeable future. In public and political discussions, the social process of immigrant inclusion is often misunderstood and presented as a manageable, even enforceable procedure in which the burden is on the individual immigrant to adjust and integrate. Such a one-sided and outright naïve way of imagining the inclusion of immigrants into the receiving society, especially when developed into policies and regulation, is counterproductive. The inclusion of immigrants is in fact a multifaceted process, bringing together the newcomer and the receiving society over a long period of time. In this relationship all policies and regulation that determine the life of immigrants influence the potential for integration a migrant and the receiving society experience alike. Policies and regulation must be consistent and coherent for inclusion to work. This is often not the case with negative consequences.
The MIND-EU Chair will focus on this gap between the reality of immigrant inclusion as a social process and the attempts to ‘squeeze’ integration into regulation and official integration policies. The chair will teach future lawyers, policy makers, and administrators about how the law, policies, and the administration of justice can create and contribute to meaningful and sustainable integration policies that (1) benefit immigrants and receiving societies alike; and (2) do not neglect or undermine other policy goals such as security, social coherence, welfare, or even the management of immigration at large.
Courses at bachelor's and master's level will introduce students to the interplay of immigration regulation, policies and rules combatting discrimination, and (mandatory) programmes specifically designed to increase the integration of immigrants. Hosted at Leiden Law School of Leiden University, the courses will be (partially) open to students from other faculties and look at law in its societal and political context. The courses will be embedded in Leiden Law School’s bachelor's and master's curriculum. Specifically, they will be offered as part of the new LL.M. track on the ‘Governance of Migration and Diversity’ [GMD], which is part of the overarching multi-disciplinary GMD project run by the Universities Leiden, Delft, and Erasmus (Rotterdam).