ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of the creation of social boundaries between migrants and the mainstream and also within different migrant groups. Policymakers pursue mechanisms designed to encourage integration across different domains of society, including political, socio-economic, civic and cultural, all in an effort to achieve cohesion. The chapter focuses on how those efforts can be futile: ultimately prospects for positive migrant incorporation are heavily dependent on wider forms of state action, including constructions of legality. It explains migration governance and the way it creates boundaries of inclusion and exclusion: 'Laws that make immigrants' sojourn in the host society contingent on their willingness to perform marginalised labor guarantee immigrant otherness and racialisation. Boundaries are increasingly employed to demonstrate interactions between different social groups. Migrants are situated within this complex migration governance infrastructure that relies on state action, social structures and individuals to determine their position.
