Written constitutions not only organize the political functioning of a territory, but also serve as the locus where a particular community is imagined and performed. This happens explicitly, through articles that define the conditions for citizenship, but also symbolically through the constitutional text, where stylistic properties and a specific idiom, lexical choices, register and structure are co-constitutive of the community a constitution integrates. This article seeks to identify ways in which a constitution as a text participates in the integration of a democratic community. Through the works of Rudolf Smend, Martin Loughlin and Hans Vorländer, I specify the concept of ‘integration’ and show how the constitution can be an actor in the integrative process of a state. I then identify seven ways in which that participation of the constitution occurs also textually: abstraction, generalization, vagueness, neutralization, subjectification, recognition and demarcation. As textual mechanisms, they contribute to elements such as elasticity, participation, identification and trust, which are necessary for democratic integration to take place. In a final section, borrowing François Cooren’s concept of textual agency, I develop the view that constitutions as texts participate in the roles they accomplish, and make a plea for a textual agency approach to constitutions to tackle topical developments and debates on integration by constitutions, such as inclusive constitution-making, constitutional identity and constitutional recognition.