Integration as a Solution to Depopulation? Producing the Moral and Loyal Resident in Policies Aiming to Attract and Retain International Migrants

Combining two streams of literature, this article is framed within critical migration studies and local migration and integration studies. Making integration discourses the object of research, I use county-oriented policies that aim to attract and retain international migrants in the north of Norway to question in what context and with what purpose the concept of integration is used in an area experiencing depopulation. Using the analytical concepts of the moral and the loyal resident to develop my arguments, I find that (1) the concept integration is primarily used within the context of participation in organized, voluntary activities and the labor market that produce ideas of the moral, active resident, and (2) the concept integration is used with the purpose of retaining residents, producing notions of the loyal resident. Here, there appears to be an assumption that a moral, active resident will or is more likely to be a loyal resident, who not only comes to an area but stays despite possibilities to move. Within this context, integration is not framed as a goal in and of itself, but rather may be better understood as a means to an end: a solution to depopulation.