Border Regimes from Below: Ethnic Networks and the Politics of Immigrant Integration

This paper examines how immigrants experience integration through the relational infrastructures of ethnic networks. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research with South Asians in Alberta, the study applies border regime theory to explore how social and political belonging is negotiated within and beyond co-ethnic spaces. It argues that immigrant integration is shaped not only by state policy but also by everyday bordering enacted within ethnic networks that function as soft border regimes. Anchored in shared language, cultural familiarity, and digital connectivity, these networks shape inclusion, trust, and civic access. Through four thematic areas, ethnic bordering, strategic multilingualism, civic engagement through cultural gateways, and belonging by permission, the analysis shows how language, identity, and institutional discourse produce everyday boundaries. The paper introduces the framework of nested integration to describe how immigrants selectively engage with broader society depending on linguistic and cultural proximity, social risk, and institutional accessibility. Extending border regime theory, it shows how community-based networks, not just the state, reproduce social borders, and reframes multilingualism as a political practice of affiliation and exclusion. The findings challenge assumptions of multicultural inclusion and advocate for integration frameworks that foreground migrant agency, multilingualism, and the relational politics of everyday bordering.