The Digitalisation of Dutch Civic Integration: How Digital Technologies Shape Inequality and Bureaucratic Discretion

Migration management is becoming increasingly digitalised, with digital borders producing inequalities by fixing framings that determine who is allowed entry and residence. Civic integration functions as another bordering practice regulating the entry and naturalisation of “migrants.” In the Netherlands, the Integration Act 2021 enshrines a partially digitalised civic integration programme, with digital monitoring across government actors, digital language classes and exams, and online communication between “integrators” and “case managers.” Nevertheless, how digitalisation shapes the interactions, decisions, and outcomes of civic integration remains unresearched. This qualitative study, based on desk research and in‐depth interviews with municipal officers and language teachers, examines the implications of digital technologies in this programme. Our findings reveal a dual impact. For “integrators” with sufficient digital literacy, these technologies offer enhanced language learning and greater self‐reliance in a taxing trajectory. However, digital technologies exacerbate existing inequalities and create new forms of digital exclusion for those with limited digital skills, as they impact their performance on their intake test, and therefore their opportunities throughout and after the civic integration trajectory. For street‐level bureaucrats, the discretion to potentially mediate these policy effects is not simply curtailed or enabled, but transformed into a “web‐level bureaucracy.” While digital technologies streamline workflows and quick assessments of a future “integrator,” they also impose administrative burdens, introduce bias, and limit bureaucratic discretion. Ultimately, digital civic integration both deepens and narrows existing inequalities and tasks street‐level bureaucrats with the responsibility to address pervasive digital divides.