Integration Otherwise Inspiration Kit : A Guide for Practitioners, Policymakers, and Community-Builders

Abstract

A practical guide with a fresh, bottom-up perspective on integration.

This Integration Otherwise Inspiration Kit invites us to look at integration from a perspective that moves beyond a polarised debate – one which either sees newcomers as failing to integrate, or views society as insufficiently welcoming. Instead, it offers a bottom-up approach highlighting how integration is already happening in everyday life.

The authors introduce the concept of ‘arrival infrastructuring’: the interactive process through which newcomers, together with others, actively shape and transform their arrival situations.

Through stories from the ground with concise takeaways, alongside tools for reflection and action, this guide equips practitioners, policymakers and community builders with a deeper understanding of the diverse forms of arrival infrastructuring, as well as the successes and challenges of everyday integration processes. It aims to inspire future policies and practices.

This book complements ‘Infrastructuring Arrival: Envisioning the Migration-Integration Nexus Beyond Crisis’, edited by Karel Arnaut, Luce Beeckmans, and Bruno Meeus (Leuven University Press, 2026).