![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Several Western European countries have adopted policies of mandatory integration, requiring immigrants to acquire country knowledge, language and values as conditions for immigration, settlement and citizenship. The underlying concept is that—in promoting civic skills—immigrants are better equipped to politically, socially and economically integrate. However, the question of whether civic integration is designed to be a real solution to repair integration problems has gone untested. This paper presents results, across a wide range of outcomes, which finds much more support for a symbolic narrative than a functional one. Using a unique data-set to measure civic integration policy across six waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2012), we find little evidence that these requirements produce tangible, long-term integration change. This does not diminish their significance; instead, we find requirements serve a meaningful gate-keeping role, while simultaneously repositioning the state closer to immigrant lives.
Keywords:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
[1] See Entzinger (Citation2003); Joppke (Citation2007, Citation2010); Also Vertovec and Wessendorf (Citation2010); Health and Demireva (2013).
[2] In October 2010, Angela Merkel declared a multicultural approach in Germany had ‘utterly failed’. See ‘Merkel erklärt “Multikulti” für gescheitert’, Deutsche Welle, October 16, 2010. In February 2011, Nicolas Sarkozy declared similar sentiments in a nationally televised debate, arguing that such a concept enabled extremism. See ‘Nicolas Sarkozy declares multiculturalism had failed’ France24, February 11, 2011.
[3] On this, see Banting and Kymlicka (Citation2013); Koopmans (Citation2010); Wright and Bloemraad (Citation2012).
[4] E.g. Koopmans et al. (Citation2012) Indicators of Citizenship Rights for Immigrants scores cultural requirements similarly to other restrictive policies of citizenship, like residency. Howard’ s (Citation2009) Citizenship Policy Index, assigns a policy ‘weight’, akin to a restrictive penalty.
[5] Case studies based on interviews with a limited number of migrants reveal only marginal integration benefits from integration courses and tests, recognising that time, stress and money countervail added benefits (Strik et al. Citation2010).
[6] This would involve measuring the degree immigrants are accepted by natives, or the extent to which there is improvement in migrant perception, after civic integration policy adoption. Testing this requires a longer timeline than the scope of this paper provides, though support for this hypothesis would not undermine present testing as it looks not at immigrant behaviour but public opinion. Moreover, more than one policy rationale can coexist.
[7] We exclude cultural integration, as it is explicitly excluded from civic integration policy objectives. The question of whether this is the case or not in practice is important (i.e. whether civic integration operates like assimilation), but one to be addressed elsewhere.
[8] For specific coding, see Appendix.
[9] Minors and spouses experience different permutations of requirements.
[10] Requirements can take different forms in the same category: language proficiency at citizenship can be demonstrated through certification, testing, obtaining a waiver based on education or completing an interview. Coding these instruments equally avoids interjecting subjectivity in the scoring, for what is easy for one migrant, say, certification of language, might be impossible for another.
[11] This cut-point is 2.5, where countries at or below this score are considered ‘low CIVIX countries’. This is consistent with qualitative evidence on policy design, where these states assess language but through traditional and subjective interviews and do not use the language of civic integration in policy-making. See Goodman (Citation2014).
[12] An exception is the Dutch model, which requires ‘oudkomers’ (settled immigrants) to pass the integration exam for continued residence.
[13] Among country-years for which we have CIVIX data, the exact figure is 4482 out of 13,467, or 33%.
[14] EU nationals automatically acquire the right of permanence residence in another EU country if they have lived there for at least five years continuously. As a result, we include a dummy variable scored ‘0’ for those born outside the EU and ‘1’ for those born inside.
[15] In our ESS sample, ‘Non-Minority’ is a dummy indicating that the respondent does not claim to be a member of an ethnic minority in the country. ‘Citizenship’ is a dummy indicating that the respondent has citizenship in the host country. Age and formal education are both measured as years.
[16] Public opinion surveys capture only the most integrated people, minimising the kind of variance reflective of actual course and test participation. Still, ESS respondents represent ‘typical’ cases for testing third-order effects.
[17] Data on file with authors. Available upon request.
[18] Furthermore, it should be said that the goal of civic integration is not necessarily that people participate, but rather that they have the skills to do so (i.e. act autonomously).
[19] We choose this measure as it provides context for interpreting well-being, unlike a strict measure of income.
[20] The more relevant figure in the unemployment analysis is the confidence interval in the top panel, e.g. around the logistic regression estimate for the intercept. The tiny confidence intervals around the predicted probability reflect low simulation error, not low estimation error.
[21] The entry exam also does not apply to Turkish nationals and family members (since 2011), migrants with paid employment (except for spiritual leaders), migrants seeking temporary residence (e.g. students) or migrants with educational qualifications (e.g. Dutch language diploma).
[22] FOI #20784. 13 December 2011. On file with authors.