Migrant incorporation / integration

Recent developments in migration studies have shown how important it is to consider multiple actors, both at origin and destination, in studying migrants’ integration processes. In light of these developments, the INTERACT survey provides a new tool to research migrant integration. Its novelty lies in offering a cross-national approach to civil society organisations at both destination and origin. These organisations are taken as actors relevant for migrant integration in EU destination countries. Upon completion the survey gathered over 900 responses from organisations working predominantly (but not only) in employment, education, language and social relations. These organisations had different levels of reach, but their voices give us a better understanding of how they support migrants in their efforts to integrate in the EU. Although the exploratory character of the survey does not allow for generalisations about all civil society organisations, it sheds light on how these actors’ activities affect migrant integration between origin and destination, and how organisations perceive states of origin and their policies in the context of the day-to-day reality of migrant incorporation in the receiving society. In this methodological paper, we will present the survey’s rationale and structure, before moving onto a description of fieldwork and the challenges faced there. This paper will thus contribute to the multisite cross-national survey literature and map out migrant civil society organisations.

The work here is of both a theoretical and an applied character. The authors pay particular attention to understanding what the integration of migrants means and how it corresponds to the terms assimilation and adaptation. They also offer a classification of complete and partial integration. For Russia, the paper retraces how the disregard of migrant integration in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s was gradually replaced – after a delay – by an understanding that these were closely interrelated spheres of State activities. This was particularly true for a country like Russia, which annually receives millions of migrants, both for permanent and temporary stays. The experience of Russia clearly demonstrates that the dissociation of the State from this important sphere of internal policy leads to ethnic tension, erosion of tolerance in society, alienation of migrants from Russian society, self-isolation, and open conflicts between migrants and local residents. Therefore, now that the integration of migrants has been understood to be an important issue in Russia, the elaboration and realization of the policy of integration of migrants is complicated by an extremely unfavorable atmosphere of xenophobia and a politically-loaded perception of migration. The Russian policy of migrant integration is evaluated in respect of the most privileged category of immigrants: Russian “compatriots”. The adaptation policy of temporary labour migrants is analyzed in the context of the Russian State’s 2012 initiatives. The authors also argue out the integration and the anti-integration potential of ethnic diasporas when – as in present-day Russia – the infrastructure for the admission and integration of migrants has not been properly developed.

Glasgow Caledonian University leads the EU AMIF (Asylum and Migrant Integration Fund) funded two-year project VOLPOWER: Enhancing Community Building and Social Integration through Dialogue and Collaboration amongst Young Europeans and Third Country Nationals. The project team consists of Professor Umut Korkut as coordinator, and Dr Fiona Reid and Dr Fiona Skillen as Principal Investigators as well as Marcus Nicolson as the Project Manager. GCU leads a consortium composed of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Austrian Academy of Sciences – Institute for Urban and Regional Research, EURAC-Institute for Minority Rights Bolzano, Zavod APIS Slovenia, SOS Malta, and IRMO Croatia. Volpower explores how youth volunteering in sports and arts activities can serve as a mechanism for social integration for youth. Sport and arts activities by their very nature demand high levels of interaction between participants. We believe that this interaction could help to foster, and facilitate community building and mutual understanding. In particular, we will be working with EU Nationals and Third Country Nationals in order to understand the challenges TCN’s face when settling within a new community. We hope that our research will demonstrate the power that volunteering can have in terms of empowering individuals within their local communities. The project will examine these ideas by working with volunteers in sport and arts organisations from across Europe. The main aims of this project are to initiate youth volunteering in sport and arts related activities amongst EU and TCNs in order to explore the effects which volunteering has on an individual’s or communities’ sense of social integration. The specific project objectives are summarised as follows: To increase integration of TCN volunteers into local communities through sport and arts volunteering, exposing TCNs to informal and formal institutions within their localities. To improve partnership between EUN and TCN volunteers through sports and arts volunteering. To provide participants with intercultural skills as well as life and leadership skills. 
 To generate communication between the local communities and volunteers of TCN and EUN backgrounds. To foreground the value of volunteering for community building through developing partnerships between the sports and arts volunteers and community stakeholders. To foster common grounds and goals for sustainable partnerships through dialogue, collaboration, and resource sharing enhanced by sports and arts volunteering. To assess practices for the inclusion of TCNs at the micro-community level via sports and arts and how participation in these activities forge intercultural dialogue and processes of integration. To introduce digital tools in illustrating good practice in volunteering. 


Amidst heated debates on immigration and “migrant integration”, the European Union becomes an increasingly relevant actor, where important resources are earmarked for the implementation of civic integration measures, as well as for producing “scientific evidence” to guide policy. Simultaneously, a prolific scholarship attempts to understand, measure and compare how and whether immigrants are “integrated into society”, often in the effort to remain “policy-relevant”. This study joins other critical works that draw attention to the ways “integration” is debated, legislated, conceptualized, monitored, evaluated, and ultimately, normalized as a mode of governance. Situated at the interstices of migration studies, European studies, and the social studies of science, the dissertation examines the role of scientific research, EU policy, and research-policy knowledge infrastructures in shaping the “immigrant integration” paradigm in Europe. Interested primarily in integrationism as a technique of power, I take a decolonial and genealogical approach that situates integrationist discourses within wider and intersecting systems of hierarchy. The main argument is that the politics of integration research and the scientific claims in “evidence-based” policy intersect to produce “migrant integration” as the hegemonic paradigm in governing migration-related diversity in Europe. Through discourse analysis of research publications, policy documents, media statements, as well as a virtual ethnography of the EU’s science-for-policy community, I examine how integration comes to be seen simultaneously as a political problem and an object of scientific fascination, how is integration regulated at supranational level and through science-policy collaboration, and what are the power effects of integrationism, as a rationality of governance, on its target subjects. Ultimately, I argue, the practices of regulating, governing, measuring, theorizing and monitoring the integration of immigrants are shaped by power relations linked to the preservation of European liberal subjecthood against rapid demographic, social, political, and environmental shifts.

"Theoretical background and objectives This project explores how policies regarding immigrant rights and welfare state regimes have affected the socio-economic integration of immigrants. Most of the literature on immigrant integration assumes that the granting of easy access of immigrants to citizenship rights and government recognition and support for cultural diversity promote the socio-economic integration of immigrants. At the same time, existing work (e.g., Borjas, van Tubergen) has shown that immigrants with low human capital resources tend to migrate preferably to countries with equal income distributions and extensive social security protection. This raises the question whether immigrant integration policies that grant easy access to citizenship rights, and thus also full access to welfare state rights, might have the unintended consequence that they produce a high rate of dependence of immigrants on welfare state arrangements and attendant socio-economic marginalisation in other domains. If integration policies in addition do not demand cultural assimilation (e.g., in the domain of language) the risk of lower-skilled immigrants to become dependent on welfare benefits may further increase. This hypothesis of an interaction effect between integration policies and welfare state regimes is confronted with cross-national data on labour market participation, residential segregation, and imprisonment of immigrants. Where possible, these comparisons are controlled for cross-national differences in the composition of immigrant populations by drawing on comparative data for particular ethnic groups. The analysis includes eight West European countries that have turned into immigration countries at roughly the same time in the 1960s and early 1970s, where institutions have therefore had several decades to affect integration outcomes. They vary both strongly regarding integration policies (including the highest, Sweden, and the second lowest scoring country, Austria, in the 2007 Migrant Integration Policy Index) and regarding welfare state regimes (with Sweden and the United Kingdom at the extremes). Research design, data and methodology The study relies on various indicators of immigrant rights, prevalent typologies and indicators of welfare state regimes, and data from the European Labour Force Survey, International Prison Statistics, as well as results from a large number of previous studies on immigrants' labour market participation, residential segregation and imprisonment. To control for composition effects, the labour market data refer to immigrants from non-EU countries, and for specific country contrasts specific ethnic groups (Turks and ex-Yugoslavs). Residential segregation data refer to a few dozen European cities, partly referring to specific ethnic groups (e.g., Turks, Maghrebians, Caribbeans, Pakistani) and partly to more general categories (Muslims, foreigners, immigrants). Findings Across the three domains of socio-economic integration a consistent cross-national patterns is found (with the exception of residential segregation in the United Kingdom) in which the gap or the degree of segregation between immigrants and the native population is largest in the countries that combine easy access to citizenship rights and a large degree of accommodation of cultural differences with a relatively encompassing and generous welfare state (Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium). Both the United Kingdom, which combines inclusive integration policies with low welfare state provision levels, and the three Germanophone countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), which combine restrictive policies with – at least in the German and Austrian cases – moderately strong welfare states, show relatively small gaps between immigrants and natives. These findings are confirmed for contrast comparisons for specific ethnic groups. For instance, compared to the native population, Turks in the Netherlands have much lower rates of labour market participation than German Turks, and similarly ex-Yugoslavs in Austria perform much better than those in Sweden. Because the results are mostly based on aggregate data – although some of the studies that are used do control for individual-level variables – they need to be further tested by taking individual and local context data more systematically into account. This will be one of the aims of the analyses in the context of project 6.3 further below."

In order to achieve better comparability among EU Member States, the 2010 Zaragoza declaration agreed on a set of common indicators which were further developed in the study Indicators of immigrant integration — a pilot study of 2011. Additional indicators were proposed by the report Using EU Indicators of Immigrant Integration — final report prepared for DG Migration and Home Affairs of 2013, with the objective of boosting the monitoring and assessment of the situation of migrants, along with the relative outcomes of integration policies. The following statistics from education are related to migration: Table codeDescription edat_lfs_9911Population by educational attainment level, sex, age and citizenship (%) edat_lfs_9912Population by educational attainment level, sex, age and country of birth (%) edat_lfse_01Early leavers from education and training by sex and citizenship edat_lfse_02Early leavers from education and training by sex and country of birth edat_lfse_23Young people neither in employment nor in education and training by sex, age and citizenship (NEET rates) edat_lfse_28Young people neither in employment nor in education and training by sex, age and country of birth (NEET rates) trng_lfs_12Participation rate in education and training (last 4 weeks) by sex, age and citizenship trng_lfs_13Participation rate in education and training (last 4 weeks) by sex, age and country of birth

This report examines the issue of integration of migrants in the Republic of Belarus. In the framework of migration policy strategy of the Republic of Belarus protection of migrants' rights and their social integration represent important tasks which are set forth in the Concept of National Security of the Belarusian state, and finding solutions to them implies development of special integration mechanisms. This research explores (1) the countries are in the focus of interest of migrant integration policy, in the context of all countries from which migrants come to Belarus, (2) the basic groups of migrants and their adaptive capabilities, (3) the typical features of migration processes in Belarus that shape and define the mechanisms of migrants' integration, as stipulated in the official documents of the Republic of Belarus, and applied in practice, (4) the strengths and weaknesses of Belarusian migrant integration policy.

In the European Union context, indicators have become increasingly important due to growing political commitment on integration policies at all levels of governance. In June 2010, EU Member States approved a number of European indicators of migrant integration, based on the EU2020 indicators and the EU’s Common Basic Principles, focusing on the core areas of employment, social inclusion, education, and active citizenship. The Commission’s July 2011 European Agenda for Integration views these indicators as a way to systematically monitor the integration situation and the EU2020 targets, enhance policy coordination, and make recommendations in dialogue with Member States. ICMPD together with the Migration Policy Group will produce an assessment report to confirm the relevance of current indicators for integration and whether current data sources are robust enough to calculate them. Objectives of the project • Analyse to what extent and whether the different integration realities in various EU Member States are the result of integration and migration policies, immigrant populations, and general contexts and policies. • Strengthen how European indicators of migrant integration capture and monitor the specific outcomes of integration policies. • Improve the way in which policy actors evaluate the effectiveness of integration policies, appreciate the other factors that shape the integration process, engage in the data and policy implications of indicators and mainstream integration into European cooperation and targets, including the EU2020 Strategy. Outcomes • Analysis reports (to explain the data behind the European indicators, test the effectiveness of certain migration and integration policies, and measure the impact of other policies). • Assessment report (to confirm the relevance of current indicators for integration and whether current data sources are robust enough to calculate them. ICMPD and the Migration Policy Group will propose additional indicators and data sources based on the chosen European indicators, the EU2020 strategy, and active citizenship). • Monitoring proposal (to outline how the European Commission can use the current and proposed indicators to monitor the results of integration policies). • Three expert seminars during the course of 2012 on the subjects of Employment, Education, and Social Inclusion and Active Citizenship.

The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) is a unique tool which measures policies to integrate migrants. The MIPEX aims to address this by providing a comprehensive tool which can be used to assess, compare and improve integration policy. The index is a useful tool to evaluate and compare what governments are doing to promote the integration of migrants in all the countries analysed. The tool allows you to dig deep into the multiple factors that influence the integration of migrants into society and allows you to use the full MIPEX results to analyse and assess past and future changes in policy. The MIPEX includes 38 countries in order to provide a view of integration policies across a broad range of differing environments. Countries included are all EU Member States, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA. 167 policy indicators have been developed to create a rich, multi-dimensional picture of migrants’ opportunities to participate in society. MIPEX addresses 8 policy areas of integration: Labour Market Mobility, Family Reunion, Education, Political Participation, Long-term Residence, Access to Nationality, Anti-discrimination and Health. Thanks to the relevance and rigor of its indicators, the MIPEX has been recognised as a common quick reference guide across Europe. Policymakers, NGOs, researchers, and European and international institutions are using its data not only to understand and compare national integration policies, but also to improve standards for equal treatment.