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This commentary is a reply to the article 'Against immigrant integration' by Willem Schinkel. It argues that rather than abandoning immigrant integration as a field of research, we have to continue to strengthen critical approaches. Immigrant integration has to be understood and analyzed as a governance technique, rendering differences purposeful for certain ends. In this way, categories such as class and race get into the picture instead of being omitted. It is also emphasized that we have to look beyond the nation state to truly unsettle common sense ideas about immigrant integration and the migrant 'other'. These points are illustrated by discussing the 'management' of immigrant integration in cities in Europe.

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While not typically the focus for academic or journalistic analyses, centre right political parties have been, are and will likely remain key actors in migration policy and politics across Europe. This special issue introduction questions and qualifies the extent to which the 2015 migration crisis affected centre-right parties' politics, positioning and policy positions on immigration, problematising the idea that the crisis represented an 'external' challenge to party politics and stressing instead the agency and role of political parties in imbuing crisis-like events with particular meanings. It argues that the crisis refracted and intensified social and value conflicts that were already developing in European party politics. While some policy innovations did occur, they tended to confirm directions that were evident beforesometimes long beforethe crisis. The article emphasizes the need to pay attention to significant variation within the centreright party family on immigration policy, and changes made over time by parties preoccupied with public opinion, with inter-party competition and with challenges posed by real-world events that were often beyond their control, but also with internal power struggles.