an article by Diego Coletto and Giovanna Fullin (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy) published in Social Inclusion Volume 7 Number 4 (2019)
Abstract
In migration studies, the preparation for the departure of people who decide to migrate has seldom been addressed as a distinct topic.
This article aims at investigating how European migrants who moved or plan to move to another European country prepare their departure.
It analyses stories of migrants who move from Italy, Spain, Romania, and Bulgaria. More specifically, attention is focused on departure preparation in order to investigate what migrants do before they depart and how the free mobility of work is perceived by Europeans and applied to their migration plans.
Different from general statements about European integration and belonging or about obstacles to intra-EU mobility, the analysis of what individuals do in order to get ready to leave their country of origin provides a very realistic idea of how people perceive European Union and the mobility within it.
Full text (PDF 10pp)
Showing posts with label integration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label integration. Show all posts
Friday, 22 November 2019
Monday, 14 October 2019
Migrant enclaves: disempowering economic ghettos or sanctuaries of opportunities for migrants?
an article by Dieu Hack-Polay (Lincoln International Business School, Lincoln, UK) published in Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy Volume 13 Issue 4 (2019)
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the migrant dilemma about operating extensively in migrant enclaves vs integration in host communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a critical literature review contrasting views and perspectives of the role of migrant enclaves in migrant integration and contribution in new societies. Research in the area of ethnic enclaves has been polarised: on the one hand, the optimists argue the critical benefits of migrant and ethnic community networks, thus downplaying potential drawbacks of such networks and the disadvantage externally imposed on migrants; on the other hand, the pessimists overemphasise the disadvantages of ethnic enclaves, portraying them as ghettos of alienation.
Findings
Based on the social solidarity integration model and immigrant-host and social interaction theory, the paper posits that migrant community networks could intentionally or unintentionally engender cultural alienation, worsening an already precarious educational, cultural and economic exclusion. Thus, migrants could remain in lower societal roles and experience limited upward social mobility if they operate exclusively within migrant and ethnic networks. However, ethnic enclaves, at the same time, offer the initial psychological nurturing on which future successful socialisation work with migrant communities can be built.
Research limitations/implications
From a research angle, the theorisation of migrant enclave requires a new approach, which identifies dynamism and contextualisation as central to the debate.
Practical implications
From a policy perspective, the research suggests the rethinking of the role of community support systems (and the wider enclave debate). The organisational implications the research suggests a shift of the organisational paradigm in the way migrant organisations manage themselves and support members in the enclave.
Originality/value
This paper’s contribution is to take a duality approach to studying the ethnic enclave and posits that this will engender effective social policy that helps reduce economic inequality.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the migrant dilemma about operating extensively in migrant enclaves vs integration in host communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a critical literature review contrasting views and perspectives of the role of migrant enclaves in migrant integration and contribution in new societies. Research in the area of ethnic enclaves has been polarised: on the one hand, the optimists argue the critical benefits of migrant and ethnic community networks, thus downplaying potential drawbacks of such networks and the disadvantage externally imposed on migrants; on the other hand, the pessimists overemphasise the disadvantages of ethnic enclaves, portraying them as ghettos of alienation.
Findings
Based on the social solidarity integration model and immigrant-host and social interaction theory, the paper posits that migrant community networks could intentionally or unintentionally engender cultural alienation, worsening an already precarious educational, cultural and economic exclusion. Thus, migrants could remain in lower societal roles and experience limited upward social mobility if they operate exclusively within migrant and ethnic networks. However, ethnic enclaves, at the same time, offer the initial psychological nurturing on which future successful socialisation work with migrant communities can be built.
Research limitations/implications
From a research angle, the theorisation of migrant enclave requires a new approach, which identifies dynamism and contextualisation as central to the debate.
Practical implications
From a policy perspective, the research suggests the rethinking of the role of community support systems (and the wider enclave debate). The organisational implications the research suggests a shift of the organisational paradigm in the way migrant organisations manage themselves and support members in the enclave.
Originality/value
This paper’s contribution is to take a duality approach to studying the ethnic enclave and posits that this will engender effective social policy that helps reduce economic inequality.
Wednesday, 6 February 2019
Pathological integration, or, how East Europeans use racism to become British
Jon E. Fox and Magda Mogilnicka (University of Bristol, UK) published in The British Journal of Sociology Volume 70 Issue 1 (January 2019)
Abstract
East Europeans are integrating into life in the UK. This entails learning to get along with their new neighbours, but it also involves not getting along with certain neighbours.
Integration is not confined to benevolent forms of everyday cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and conviviality; it can also include more pathological forms, like racism. Whilst integration is generally seen as desirable, the learning that it entails necessarily includes less desirable practices and norms.
The aim of this article is to show how East Europeans in the UK have been acquiring specifically British competencies of racism. This doesn't mean all East Europeans are racist or they always use racism; it does mean, however, that racism is a part of the integration equation.
We focus on the racist and racializing practices of Poles, Hungarians and Romanians in Bristol in the UK. These East Europeans are using racism to insert themselves more favourably into Britain's racialized status hierarchies. This is a kind of integration.
Full text (PDF 19pp)
Abstract
East Europeans are integrating into life in the UK. This entails learning to get along with their new neighbours, but it also involves not getting along with certain neighbours.
Integration is not confined to benevolent forms of everyday cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and conviviality; it can also include more pathological forms, like racism. Whilst integration is generally seen as desirable, the learning that it entails necessarily includes less desirable practices and norms.
The aim of this article is to show how East Europeans in the UK have been acquiring specifically British competencies of racism. This doesn't mean all East Europeans are racist or they always use racism; it does mean, however, that racism is a part of the integration equation.
We focus on the racist and racializing practices of Poles, Hungarians and Romanians in Bristol in the UK. These East Europeans are using racism to insert themselves more favourably into Britain's racialized status hierarchies. This is a kind of integration.
Full text (PDF 19pp)
Friday, 24 August 2018
The ethnic segregation of immigrants in the US from 1850 to 1940
a column by Katherine Eriksson and Zach Ward for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
Those opposed to immigration often contend that immigrants are slow to assimilate.
This column takes a longer-term view of assimilation by looking at the degree of ethnic spatial segregation in the US during and after the Age of Mass Migration. New methods and newly digitised data suggest that segregation in the US between 1850 and 1940 was both higher and more widespread than previously thought.
However, despite slow rates of spatial assimilation, immigrants tend to assimilate culturally at a fast rate.
Continue reading
Those opposed to immigration often contend that immigrants are slow to assimilate.
This column takes a longer-term view of assimilation by looking at the degree of ethnic spatial segregation in the US during and after the Age of Mass Migration. New methods and newly digitised data suggest that segregation in the US between 1850 and 1940 was both higher and more widespread than previously thought.
However, despite slow rates of spatial assimilation, immigrants tend to assimilate culturally at a fast rate.
Continue reading
Sunday, 4 March 2018
Democratic legitimacy in regional economic organizations: the European Union in comparative perspective
an article by Francesca Duina (Bates College, Lewiston, ME, USA) and Tobias Lenz (University of Goettingen, Germany published in Economy and Society Volume 46 Issue 3-4 (2017)
Abstract
Regional organizations have been widely criticized for lacking democratic legitimacy, but these criticisms have been rather ad hoc, concerned with single case studies and reliant on unclear standards or metrics.
Are all organizations similarly deficient?
And how does the European Union (EU), the target par excellence of the criticisms, fare in comparative perspective?
In this paper, we take a first step towards answering these questions by leveraging the rich debate on the EU to identify several institutional dimensions of democratic legitimacy and operationalizing them for comparative analysis. We then investigate the most important regional economic organizations (REOs) in the world.
Our findings are three-fold:
Abstract
Regional organizations have been widely criticized for lacking democratic legitimacy, but these criticisms have been rather ad hoc, concerned with single case studies and reliant on unclear standards or metrics.
Are all organizations similarly deficient?
And how does the European Union (EU), the target par excellence of the criticisms, fare in comparative perspective?
In this paper, we take a first step towards answering these questions by leveraging the rich debate on the EU to identify several institutional dimensions of democratic legitimacy and operationalizing them for comparative analysis. We then investigate the most important regional economic organizations (REOs) in the world.
Our findings are three-fold:
- there is systematic variation across REOs, with a group doing rather well, one mixed, and one poorly;
- procedural dimensions fare better than those related to representation or local self-determination;
- no organization exhibits or lacks legitimacy in all dimensions.
Tuesday, 21 November 2017
Evaluating the Labour Market Integration of New Immigrants in the UK
an article by Tommaso Frattini (University of Milan) published in Social Policy and Society Volume 16 Issue 4 (October 2016)
Abstract
This article analyses the labour market integration of newly arrived immigrants in the UK labour market, based on data from the UK Labour Force Survey. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom since 2000 and distinguish different cohorts based on the year of their arrival in the country.
We examine the extent to which these new arrivals were able to enter work and move up into skilled jobs, and analyse the sectors of the economy that have proved most amenable to this progression.
The analysis indicates that these new arrivals fared relatively well in the workforce. In part as a result of their relative youth and high education levels, many new arrivals (especially those from the European Union and in particular the EU10 countries) moved straight into work.
Full text (PDF 14pp)
Abstract
This article analyses the labour market integration of newly arrived immigrants in the UK labour market, based on data from the UK Labour Force Survey. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom since 2000 and distinguish different cohorts based on the year of their arrival in the country.
We examine the extent to which these new arrivals were able to enter work and move up into skilled jobs, and analyse the sectors of the economy that have proved most amenable to this progression.
The analysis indicates that these new arrivals fared relatively well in the workforce. In part as a result of their relative youth and high education levels, many new arrivals (especially those from the European Union and in particular the EU10 countries) moved straight into work.
Full text (PDF 14pp)
Wednesday, 2 November 2016
Naturalisation and on-the-job training: evidence from first-generation immigrants in Germany
an article by Friederike von Haaren-Giebel and Malte Sandner (Leibniz Universität, Hannover) published in IZA Journal of Migration Volume 5 (2016)
Abstract
This paper empirically analyses the effect of naturalisation on on-the-job training (OJT) participation among first-generation immigrants in Germany. OJT is associated with improved labour market outcomes and provides therefore an indicator for labour market integration.
Naturalisation is assumed to act as a signal of the employee’s commitment to the host country and may thus increase employers’ likelihood of offering OJT. Testing the theoretical link with multivariate estimations (based on the German Socio-Economic Panel) shows a positive and significant correlation. To reduce selection bias on observables, propensity score matching is applied, yielding a significant average treatment effect.
Full text
Abstract
This paper empirically analyses the effect of naturalisation on on-the-job training (OJT) participation among first-generation immigrants in Germany. OJT is associated with improved labour market outcomes and provides therefore an indicator for labour market integration.
Naturalisation is assumed to act as a signal of the employee’s commitment to the host country and may thus increase employers’ likelihood of offering OJT. Testing the theoretical link with multivariate estimations (based on the German Socio-Economic Panel) shows a positive and significant correlation. To reduce selection bias on observables, propensity score matching is applied, yielding a significant average treatment effect.
Full text
Friday, 19 October 2012
Re-thinking Integration
an IPPR Briefing paper by Clare McNeil and Myriam Cherti published by IPPR in October 2012
There has been an enormous amount of academic and policy work on the integration of minority cultural communities, especially certain Muslim communities, into “mainstream” society in the last decade.
Our task in this briefing is to outline a potential new approach, one that we call “everyday integration”. We believe that this approach, grounded in new academic work, provides a better way of both analysing and advancing the possibilities for the integration of different communities into a stable social order.
In academia, most work on integration has focused on supposed conflicts of values between minority communities and western liberalism, and the difficulties that these conflicts create for social life in European countries. Many of these debates have moved from academia into policy discourse, stemming from such events as the French headscarf controversy and the security implications of radicalisation and extremism.
For over a decade, this debate has been characterised by a simple choice between, on the one hand, a multicultural group-rights approach popular in much of the academic community and, on the other hand, an increasingly assimilative approach focused on developing a stronger sense of shared citizenship and national identity, which is popular among much of the policy community.
It is our contention that both of these models are mistaken. We propose that future work on the best ways of integrating minority communities into broader society should focus on everyday integration, that is, on sites where identities are constructed and reconstructed and where new possibilities of group allegiance are continually developed. In this briefing, we have suggest that four potential areas for further exploration in this regard are:
Full text (PDF 20pp)
There has been an enormous amount of academic and policy work on the integration of minority cultural communities, especially certain Muslim communities, into “mainstream” society in the last decade.
Our task in this briefing is to outline a potential new approach, one that we call “everyday integration”. We believe that this approach, grounded in new academic work, provides a better way of both analysing and advancing the possibilities for the integration of different communities into a stable social order.
In academia, most work on integration has focused on supposed conflicts of values between minority communities and western liberalism, and the difficulties that these conflicts create for social life in European countries. Many of these debates have moved from academia into policy discourse, stemming from such events as the French headscarf controversy and the security implications of radicalisation and extremism.
For over a decade, this debate has been characterised by a simple choice between, on the one hand, a multicultural group-rights approach popular in much of the academic community and, on the other hand, an increasingly assimilative approach focused on developing a stronger sense of shared citizenship and national identity, which is popular among much of the policy community.
It is our contention that both of these models are mistaken. We propose that future work on the best ways of integrating minority communities into broader society should focus on everyday integration, that is, on sites where identities are constructed and reconstructed and where new possibilities of group allegiance are continually developed. In this briefing, we have suggest that four potential areas for further exploration in this regard are:
- early-years childcare
- shopping and consumption
- leisure activities
- supplementary education.
Full text (PDF 20pp)
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Spatialities of Ethnocultural Relations in Multicultural East London: Discourses of Interaction and Social Mix
an article by Penny-Panagiota Koutrolikou (Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Greece) published in Urban Studies Volume 49 Number 10 (August 2012)
Abstract
Healey has described planning as managing a shared existence in space.
In the context of multicultural cities, this shared lived experience brings to the forefront the interdependence of the factors shaping urban life and intergroup relations. In the past decade, throughout Europe, urban policies for deprived areas became increasingly concerned with issues of segregation, community cohesion and social mix alongside addressing deprivation.
Concerns about urban tensions further accentuated such tendencies. Implicitly or explicitly, such policies rely strongly on the influence of contact and the interaction of intergroup relations.
However, the way that the associated theories have been incorporated into discussions and policies tends to focus on a fleeting interaction approach, with questionable outcomes. Through the lens of two London boroughs, this paper explores the spatial dimensions of ‘living together’ and the ways that social mix, interaction and multicultural spaces affect intergroup relations.
Abstract
Healey has described planning as managing a shared existence in space.
In the context of multicultural cities, this shared lived experience brings to the forefront the interdependence of the factors shaping urban life and intergroup relations. In the past decade, throughout Europe, urban policies for deprived areas became increasingly concerned with issues of segregation, community cohesion and social mix alongside addressing deprivation.
Concerns about urban tensions further accentuated such tendencies. Implicitly or explicitly, such policies rely strongly on the influence of contact and the interaction of intergroup relations.
However, the way that the associated theories have been incorporated into discussions and policies tends to focus on a fleeting interaction approach, with questionable outcomes. Through the lens of two London boroughs, this paper explores the spatial dimensions of ‘living together’ and the ways that social mix, interaction and multicultural spaces affect intergroup relations.
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Self-employment of immigrants and natives in Sweden – a multilevel analysis
an article by Henrik Ohlsson (Lund University, Malmö, Sweden) and Per Broomé and Pieter Bevelander (Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden) published in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal Volume 24 Issue 5-6 (June 2012)
Abstract
Recent research suggests that self-employment among immigrants is due to a combination of multiple situational, cultural and institutional factors, all acting together. Using multilevel regression and unique data on the entire population of Sweden for the year 2007, this study attempts to quantify the relative importance for the self-employed of embeddedness in ethnic contexts (country of birth) and regional business and public regulatory frameworks (labour market areas).
This information indicates whether the layers under consideration are valid constructs of the surroundings that influence individual self-employment. The results show that 10% (women) and 8% (men) of the total variation in individual differences in self-employment can be attributed to the country of birth. When labour market areas are included in the analyses, the share of the total variation increases to 14% for women and 12% for men.
The results show that the ethnic context and the economic environment play a minor role in understanding individual differences in self-employment levels. The results can have important implications when planning interventions or other actions focusing on self-employment as public measures to promote self-employment often are based on geographic areas and ethnic contexts.
Hazel’s comment:
I wonder if the same picture applies in the UK. Anyone have any idea? I couldn't find anything obvious.
Abstract
Recent research suggests that self-employment among immigrants is due to a combination of multiple situational, cultural and institutional factors, all acting together. Using multilevel regression and unique data on the entire population of Sweden for the year 2007, this study attempts to quantify the relative importance for the self-employed of embeddedness in ethnic contexts (country of birth) and regional business and public regulatory frameworks (labour market areas).
This information indicates whether the layers under consideration are valid constructs of the surroundings that influence individual self-employment. The results show that 10% (women) and 8% (men) of the total variation in individual differences in self-employment can be attributed to the country of birth. When labour market areas are included in the analyses, the share of the total variation increases to 14% for women and 12% for men.
The results show that the ethnic context and the economic environment play a minor role in understanding individual differences in self-employment levels. The results can have important implications when planning interventions or other actions focusing on self-employment as public measures to promote self-employment often are based on geographic areas and ethnic contexts.
Hazel’s comment:
I wonder if the same picture applies in the UK. Anyone have any idea? I couldn't find anything obvious.
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