Aussortierte Dokumente

1. Social exclusion and integration in Luhmann’s system theory

Niklas Luhmann system theory based differentiation theory of society goes even further. He claims
inclusion- and exclusion-principles lie as a super code in front of all other differentiation processes in
the modern, functional differentiated society. These principles determine who and to which extent
can take part in negotiation and system operation processes (Farzin, 2006 p.79; Luhmann, 1997
p.632). Inclusion into the society systems means that each individual has got a performance or
audience role within every functional differentiated system. Furthermore, it is possible for everybody
to take part in the inclusion/exclusion operations to define one’s own role in society (Luhmann, 1997
p.620 f.). Exclusion mechanism would be the natural secondary product of ongoing, self-referring
operations to structure communication processes alongside the functional differentiated society
systems. During the differentiation processes memberships (or as an aggregation of all memberships
career building) and their ingroup-outgroup-implications remains the only lasting sustainable
inclusion mechanism to integrate into the interlocking systems (such as education, health care or
labour market) (Luhmann, 1997 p.630). At the edges of society as a result of the functional
differentiation there grow meshing, negative exclusion principles and spill-over effects. Exclusion
doesn’t mean exclusion out of all communication processes but out from the important society
system operations (Farzin, 2006 p.54, 66; Luhmann, 1997 p.625, 630 ff.). But because the claim of
Western humanitarianism doesn’t permit exclusions in society one major strategy is to put the view
and discussion away from the excluded and unnamed. To name exclusion mechanism social residual
problems narrows the view towards the only possibility to keep the ongoing process of system
operations: Always provide a prospect and the actual chance of future improvement (Farzin, 2006
p.50 f., 57, ; Luhmann, 1997 p.626). Furthermore, local separation helps to ignore problems which
seem to be unsolvable. Secondary (social) systems, such as health care, unemployment benefit or
pension systems, fulfil the function to reintegrate the excluded into the normal operation mechanism
of the primary systems, such as the education, the culture or the labour market system. The goal of
the secondary system is to put the view of the in-group persons on the excluded but also to provide a
position to the excluded from which they find supply to the system operations. The function of
primary systems is to provide wealth, the pursue of happiness, security and an integrated, but
functional differentiated (therefore complex) society structure (Farzin, 2006 p.73 f., 82, 107).
Because all systems are linked with each other it is not possible to make a differentiation between
social integration and system integration or between economic and cultural integration according to
a differentiation based society theory (Luhmann, 1997 p.618). On the other hand, these links are the
reason why immigration policy is such a complex and differentiated topic: a profound integration
means it effects all essential systems but also civil society and all common constitutions, values, set
of rules and cultural backgrounds. E.g. Integration into health care systems requires persons who
own the money, so immigrants must be integrated in labour market. Thus they need other career
requirements such as a specific knowledge which they get taught by the education system. For this,
they need to speak the language and accept society values such as the importance of education and
career building measures (Luhmann, 1997). To react to social and economic changes the sovereignty
to decide over membership structure and composition is an essential key to form situation-fitting
organisations, networks and societies (Luhmann, 1997 p.827).

For Luhmann membership alongside organisations and systems (or in the sum alongside the state
and civil society) is the base for ingroup-outgroup-decisions of each individual or the total society. He
claims membership is a “communication preserving fiction to bundle heterogenic individual
preferences. This includes a variation of norm binding (via constitutions, laws, contracts, social
institutions, set of values or culture), an economic cost-benefit calculation and an motivational
interest of career building, each under the consideration of individual preferences, freedom premises
and other motivational factors (Luhmann, 2000 p.110 f.). Norm binding processes in a western
society means at least the continous attempt to search, find and share common values, mutual
acceptance, a humanly manner and the willingness, to endeavour new things and people. Moreover,
the capability of conflict coping and to search and find an identity and social role in the society
through career making are essential key features for social integration. Besides deconstruction, irony
and self-criticism are required skills to question your own culture, identity and values and to get
along in a poly contextual and diverse structured society. Social integration processes are always
balance processes of difference experiencing and common solution finding (Sturm, 26.04.2016).

And this function through social inclusion-exclusion mechanism which have the purpose to maintain
the power of redefining social structures due to the current, appropriate situation. Appropriateness
is evaluated alongside the membership criteria.

Studies could show that the willingness to integrate more diverse ethnic groups and a higher number
of immigrants rises with the current economic growth. But if the financial situation is bad-evaluated
or expected to decline in the future anti-immigrant movements growth in the low-payed sector and
in national-conservative circles. On the other hand, framing was a major key factor for accepted anti-
immigration policy and far-right propaganda (Steil, 2014 p.1114). Steil’s quality research on over
1301 cities in the US with over 25,000 habitants shows that a diverse society and a lively exchange
between communities politically, socially and in everyday life are crucial for adopting pro-
immigration mind sets and regulations. On the other side, the growth of Hispanic immigrants in cities
with a penchant for anti-immigration laws was used as a general argument to restrict crime and to
enforce local law enforcement agencies although the crime ration didn’t rise (so there was no
correlation between crime rate and higher Hispanic ratio) (Steil, 2014 p.1129 ff.).

a) Economic Integration
Critics against immigration fear the thread of low-skilled immigrants. Conservatives claims
immigrants would import socialist views into politics and undermined American institutions. Liberals
and Progressive said immigrant would bring in organisational incapacity and docility into America
which weakens political institutions and labour unions (Koven & Goetzke, 2010 p.29 f.; Portes &
Rumbaut, 2006 p.122) Nowadays immigration critics fear an economic crisis because of the rise of
illegal, uneducated immigrant numbers especially from Mexico (Koven & Goetzke, 2010 p.2, 14 f.).

After the neoclassic migration model, immigration is always a benefit-costs-analysis for each further
immigrant. The goal of every country is to maximize economic utility (e.g. gross domestic product).
One the other hand, each individual immigrant (ration agent = “systematically and purposefully do
the best to achieve their objectives”) looks at costs and benefits of migration to a new host country
in comparison to the current situation. Therefore, in the model it is most important to know the list
of preference of each agent and the restrictions who’s put under. The marginal benefit of additional
earnings, better living conditions (e.g. lower living prices), more safety, liberty and property is in US
so high in comparison to Mexico, that Mexicans, especially young men, bear the fear of illegality, bad
working conditions in the US and no social help in case of an emergency(Koven & Goetzke, 2010, p.
39 ff.).

The United States of America earns in total a net benefit (valued by GDP) from migration but the
competition is in favour of enterprises and the industry but presses wages of labour and middle class
employees. Since the early beginning of immigration until nowadays America pulled immigrants from
economically weak countries towards US. To cope with wages pressure it is important to search for
immigrants who don’t compete with the employees, but have an education or a job which is
searched by the industry because of a labour shortage in this area. Thus, economically it is important
to search for immigrants who fit to the economy by substitutional and not competing job education
(Koven & Goetzke, 2010 p.6). This applies e.g. to computer scientific companies. In the 90th or 00th
more than half of Silicon Valley companies were fund by non-American born. Also low-skilled
workers helps American industry in low-payed jobs which are demanded by American citizens (Koven
& Goetzke, 2010 p.22 f.). It is also important to search for people who cannot build too large network
groups – so pressure of integration into the native group is higher because they cannot build their
own social institutions. Within the neoclassic integration model marginal integration costs are
increasing per unit and are not rising continuously because the probability of failed integration does
rise with the number of immigrants especially from one single group or cultural background. On
surplus the integration costs rise dramatically, if the native and large immigration groups have very
different cultures, institutions and regulations (Koven & Goetzke, 2010, p. 45). So the individual
utility maximizing theory according to the SEU-concept (mathematically: chance of action occurrence
times the net benefit minus the net costs) is only manageable if you consider social frames,
institutions, values and cultural traits (Koven & Goetzke, 2010, p. 22). As a result of the rising number
of Mexican immigrants the US does have increasing costs per unit because of the cultural differences.
Not even the different

Not only since the refugee crisis following the Syrian War but since the creation of Schengen area, EU
countries and EU institutions try to cooperate and adhere border control policy together. The goal of
the Schengen area wasn’t only to create border-free movement within the EU, but also to enforce
border control to make it on a EU level more effectively. Thus until nowadays border control is a
difficult subject within the EU, both because of the territory management difficulties and the diverse
opinions about border control within the EU. The UK Secure Border White paper was one of the early
Security papers within the EU which claimed a semipermeable immigration policy – separation
between the “wanted, skilled workers” and the “potentially violent, unskilled migrants”. The goal
was to enforce border control by technology, special security agencies and more intense cooperation
within the cooperating EU-countries and especially European visa regulations. 2003 UK supposed to
work more intensely with transit and migrants’ origin countries. Safe harbour places should be
developed nearby their home countries, transit zones at the essential (for refugee-flows) borders of
the EU. Although EU countries couldn’t find an agreement, some pilot project started e.g. with Libya
to secure their borders and to create refugee camps. Cooperation with and a stronger pressure on
neighbour countries such as Turkey, the Balkan States or Ukraine forced them to take more security
measures and gapless border controls into action. Aid, financial support and development payments
are the incentives for World three countries to cooperative more strongly with EU-countries.
Repatriation Agreements about illegal and not-accepted immigrants rose highly since the late 90th.
Thus, the EU tries to delegate security and border control measures such as electronic pass controls
to other countries to enlarge the belts of anti-immigration zones. Also the increasing number of
repatriation agreements of illegal and not-accepted immigrants rose highly until the end of the 00th.
But delegation policy chances are limited to resources, the willingness of cooperation and the greed
of rich statesmen to earn fast European money. Also the poor following of human rights has been a
trouble shooting issue and caused many disputes between European countries. One further strategy
was to delegate border and security tasks to non-state organisations and agencies. Parts of civil
society should help to secure the difficult task of border security at Europeans fringes. (Zureik &
Salter, 2005 p.203 ff.). In comparison to the US or to Australia the number of borders towards other
countries is dramatically higher and the Mediterranean is far more easy to cross than the Atlantic
Ocean. With regard of this, I claim that border security in Europe is far more difficult than in the US.
In sum this new security and border policy is called the European “responsibilities strategy” (Zureik &
Salter, 2005 p.205).

Pro-immigration theorists claim that the ius sanguinis right in several countries leads to cultural and
social segregation because second or third immigration descendants wouldn’t be included on the
political level. They claim that nowadays citizenship is not necessarily required for political and civil
integration on the level of equal rights which should be the goal of immigration regulations. Other
claim that the right to vote should be the last bastion of citizenship right of the nation state
community (Rubio-Mari ́n, 2000 p.3 f.).

a) Economic Integration
According to the neoclassical economic migration model cost-benefit analysis will be done also by
migrants. They evaluate the risks of their journey, of the new cultural and economic environment
and the loss of family and friends in comparison with the costs and future perspectives of staying at
home (Koven & Goetzke, 2010 p.23). Political prosecution or global warming can be reasons why the
costs of staying are higher as any other costs – especially if both perspectives is only an evaluation
between two different death and torture chance rates. In highly critical situations any border and
security measures cannot stop unwilling migration because for the migrants there might still be a
slight chance to reach the “praised land”. People tend to stay at their home unless the pressure of
low future improvement perspectives are so low, that migration is still the better alternative.
Especially through the Syrian War big refugee groups from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan came into
Europe and settled mainly in Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries. But the influx of low-
skilled migrant workers was so high, that the most important economy analysis institutes forecasted
a net-balance loss of Germanys GDP of 21,5 billion each year. This is the reason why experts propose
that work requirements, minimum wage and unemployment benefit should be lowered, whereas it is
very important to rise flexibility on the labour market by imposing more labour leasing measures.
Additionally, they put an outstanding stress on border control strengthening – so the European
Schengen area and Dublin-system of refugee distribution between the European countries work
properly and sustainable.

One major difference is that all borders control is regulated by state agencies within the NAFTA
region whereas European Schengen Agreement managed visa-free border migration of all EU-
citizens.

America is politically and economically a superpower in the world, people are very patriotic about
their country. In comparison, Europe exist out of 27 different states with a huge variety of historically
different evolved societies. Whereas it is said French would be pretty patriotic as well, since World
War II Germans moral culture expects the citizens not to be too patriotic. US federal structure is also
important but doesn’t affect immigration policy to a large extent because it is regulated by State
agencies, the Congress, the Government and executive administrative.

Utility maximizing and the actual and potential chances to manage their career alongside
membership affiliations are the one core value which the state has to secure within the states. Thus,
economically it is important to prefer not only refugees because of their urgent but also skilled and
capable immigrant workers. Only if a current basis of wealth is secured, integration measures can be
fulfilled in a socially, economically and systematically coherent way. Therefore, it is also important to
set up a quota system also for refugees, in Germany recently well-discussed as absolute limit. The
first-come-first-serves immigration system is not a fitting regulation system. Instead of this from the
argumentative point of view alongside membership criteria some specific traces such as required job,
education and language skills should be analysed at the peripheries of European Schengen area or
after the allocation distribution into specific refugee camps.

On the other hand, specific value and cultural traces such as openness towards the functional
differentiated system of Western democracies alongside membership criteria should be known as an
important additional criterion for the immigration and integration criteria. The self-determination of
the state to structure society and cultural identity is a core value of the nation state concept. Cultural
identity doesn’t help only to reduce economic transaction costs but is essential for the self-
determination of civil society and the state power. Cultural resemblance should be especially play a
more important role in Europe in comparison to US. Whereas in the US cultural identity and
American core values are vitally discussed, in Europe the discussion about European core values
hasn’t started yet on a European but only a national society level. Furthermore, this criterion could
be essential for refugee and migration integration decisions if economically differentiations cannot
be made because of missing education and profession documents or the even undereducated level.
American civil society has never been so divided as nowadays. White, old men voters even prefer to
vote for Donald Trump although most of them knows he propagated anti-establishment, populistic
states, isn’t able to fulfil what he promises and differentiates American civil society even more.