IMISCOE Research Series

Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas
Rinus Penninx  Editors

Integration
Processes
and Policies
in Europe
Contexts, Levels and Actors
IMISCOE Research Series
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Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas • Rinus Penninx
Editors

Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe
Contexts, Levels and Actors
Editors
Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas Rinus Penninx
GRITIM Universiteit van Amsterdam
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Barcelona, Spain

ISSN 2364-4087 ISSN 2364-4095 (electronic)

IMISCOE Research Series
ISBN 978-3-319-21673-7 ISBN 978-3-319-21674-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4

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Acknowledgements

This book brings together two developments. First, it presents the new state of the
art of research on migration and integration in Europe, thereby constituting a fol-
low-up to the first IMISCOE Research Network book Dynamics of International
Migration and Settlement in Europe, edited by R. Penninx, M. Berger and K. Kraal
and published by Amsterdam University Press. Second, the initiative for this book
was triggered by the INTERACT research project, led by the Migration Policy
Centre of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence and financed by the
European Commission’s European Investment Fund. The INTERACT project’s aim
is to study ‘the impact of origin countries on the integration of migrants in host
countries’ and to identify and analyse ‘the links established between migrants and
their countries of origin, [including] their nature, the actors involved (individual and
collective, state or non-state) and their impact on the various dimensions (economic,
civic and political, cultural, social) of migrants’ integration in the host country’ (EIF
grant application form, December 2012).
Within the INTERACT project, this book has a specific task and function. While
a major activity of the project has been to collect data on how actors in countries of
origin seek to influence migrants in destination countries (reported on extensively at
http://interact-project.eu), the editors of this book were asked in the name of
IMISCOE to capture the state of the art of research relevant to the questions raised
by the INTERACT project.
We thank the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the EUI for offering us the
opportunity to bring together a number of experts on elements that we sought to
cover on the topic of this volume. We also thank the European Commission for
funding this effort through the MPC. We are indebted to Michelle Luijben for the
editing and preparation of the manuscript and to the three anonymous reviewers for
their insightful comments. The responsibility for the content of the chapters and the
book rests solely with the authors and editors.

v
Contents

1 Introduction: Integration as a Three-Way Process Approach? ........... 1

Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas and Rinus Penninx
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical
Tool and as a Policy Concept .................................................................. 11
Rinus Penninx and Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe:
A Historical and Demographic Perspective........................................... 31
Christof Van Mol and Helga de Valk
4 National Immigration and Integration
Policies in Europe Since 1973 ................................................................. 57
Jeroen Doomernik and María Bruquetas-Callejo
5 Who Is an Immigrant and Who Requires
Integration? Categorizing in European Policies ................................... 77
Liza Mügge and Marleen van der Haar
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration .................. 91
Peter Scholten and Rinus Penninx
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm
and Its Relevance for Integration ........................................................... 109
Liza Mügge
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments
and Migrant Organizations .................................................................... 127
Edith van Ewijk and Gery Nijenhuis
9 Sending Country Policies ........................................................................ 147
Eva Østergaard-Nielsen

vii
viii Contents

10 Migration and Development Framework

and Its Links to Integration .................................................................... 167
Russell King and Michael Collyer
11 Analysis and Conclusions ........................................................................ 189
Rinus Penninx and Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas

Author Bios ...................................................................................................... 203

Chapter 1
Introduction: Integration as a Three-Way
Process Approach?

Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas and Rinus Penninx

The EU Concept of Integration: From a Two-Way to a Three-

Way Process

The reference to integration as a three-way process in the title of this chapter relates
to the European Commission’s recent departure from viewing integration as a
strictly two-way process (between migrants and the receiving society) to now
acknowledge ‘that countries of origin can have a role to play in support of the inte-
gration process’ (EC 2011, 10). Where does this change in policy perspective come
from? The Europeanization of immigration and integration policy has followed dif-
ferent rhythms. During the 5 years of the Tampere Programme (1999–2004), immi-
gration policies dominated the agenda. Integration was defined in a rather limited
way in that early phase: until 2003 EU policies started from the implicit assumption
that if the legal position of immigrants was equal (in as far as possible, as the
Tampere programme stipulated) to that of national citizens and if adequate instru-
ments were in place to combat discrimination, integration processes could be left to
societal forces. Thus, legal integration (= equality) was to be ensured by means of
the directives on family reunification and free movement after 5 years and by com-
prehensive anti-discrimination directives.
In 2003 the European Commission came up with a more comprehensive view on
integration policies in its Communication on Immigration, Integration and
Employment (EC 2003). This defined integration as ‘a two-way process based on
reciprocity of rights and obligations of third-country nationals and host societies

B. Garcés-Mascareñas (*)
GRITIM, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
R. Penninx
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 1

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_1
2 B. Garcés-Mascareñas and R. Penninx

[and foreseeing] the immigrant’s full participation’. Integration was conceived as a

balance of rights and obligations, and policies took a holistic approach targeting all
dimensions of integration (including economic, social, and political rights; cultural
and religious diversity; and citizenship and participation).
One year later, in November 2004, the Council of Ministers responsible for inte-
gration agreed on the Common Basic Principles (CBPs) for integration as a first step
towards a shared framework for a European approach to immigrant integration and
a point of reference for the implementation and evaluation of current and future
integration policies (Council of the EU 2004). The first article of the CBPs defines
integration as ‘a dynamic, two-way process of mutual accommodation by all immi-
grants and residents of Member States’.
Within this common EU framework the Commission set up a quasi-open method
of coordination (Geddes & Scholten 2014) based on the exchange of information on
integration policies, networks of experts, and EU-wide evaluation mechanisms.
National Contact Points on integration were designated by the ministries responsi-
ble for immigrant integration policy to promote information exchange, to monitor
progress, and to disseminate “best practices” at the national and EU levels. With a
similar purpose, the European Integration Forum was established. This EU platform
of representatives of civil society and migrant organizations was a forum for consul-
tation, exchange of expertise, and identification of policy recommendations. Even
more significantly, the European Integration Fund (EIF) was put in place to finance
national programmes and community actions with a total budget of €825 million
from 2007 to 2013. All of these mechanisms have stimulated member states to
implement the CBPs (at least, three of the priorities) in multi-annual programmes
on integration. These measures clearly illustrate the EU’s efforts to build a common
approach to integration through the use of ‘soft pressure’, thus outside traditional
EU decision-making procedures (Carrera & Faure Atger 2011, 13).
In this process the EU has gradually expanded its definition of immigrants’ inte-
gration. In the 2005 EU Communication A Common Agenda for Integration:
Framework for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals in the European Union,
the Commission states that involvement of stakeholders at all levels—migrant orga-
nizations, human rights organizations, and social partners—is essential for the suc-
cess of integration policies. In 2010, the third multi-annual programme on an Area
of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), the so-called Stockholm Programme,
insisted once more that integration requires ‘not only efforts by national, regional
and local authorities but also a greater commitment by the host community and
immigrants’ (EC 2010).
A major shift in policy framing came in 2011 with the renewed European Agenda
for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals, which added the countries of origin
as a third key actor in the process of immigrants’ integration, thereby introducing
the three-way process.
Countries of origin can have a role to play in support of the integration process in three
ways: 1) to prepare the integration already before the migrants’ departure; 2) to support the
migrants while in the EU, e.g. through support via the Embassies; 3) to prepare the migrant’s
temporary or definitive return with acquired experience and knowledge (EC 2011, 10).
1 Introduction: Integration as a Three-Way Process Approach? 3

Several questions are raised by this shift from a two-way to a three-way process
approach, which basically means a shift in focus from two actors (immigrants and
host community) to three actors (immigrants, host community, and countries of
origin). A first question is why this shift took place; that is, what did it respond to.
The second, more fundamental question is whether the three-way process is a rele-
vant way to look at integration. It is this question that underpins this book. Our
attempt to respond to this question should be understood as an academic assessment
a posteriori of a political definition that does not seem to have been directly sup-
ported by previous academic research.
In order to answer these concrete questions on EU policies, we take a step back
to consider three somewhat broader and interconnected issues: (i) the way integra-
tion is conceptualized and studied in Europe; (ii) the way integration policies are
studied and how the concept of integration is used in policy formulation and prac-
tice; and (iii) the way new perspectives and actors (e.g., those in countries of origin)
are incorporated in analyses of integration processes and policies.

The Academic Approach to Integration and Policies

How does the development of the concept of integration in policies, as outlined

above, reflect academic work on integration of newcomers in a society? Are the
conceptual changes in EU policies inspired by academic approaches? Or, is the
academy saddled with the task of legitimating a new concept divined by policymak-
ers? Historically, the forerunners of integration studies, classical assimilation theo-
ries, defined settlement and incorporation as a more or less linear process in which
immigrants were supposed to change almost completely to merge with the main-
stream culture and society. For instance, Warner and Srole (1945), who introduced
this concept at the end of the Second World War, assumed that all groups in US
society would evolve towards the American way of life. While this was seen as a
straight-line process, these authors noted that the pace might vary depending on fac-
tors such as cultural distance (the Anglo-conformity gap) and racial categorizations,
thus mostly depending on the characteristics of immigrant groups.
The main criticisms of this one-sided perspective explain the gradual shift
towards the currently dominant two-way process to integration. Safi (2011) classi-
fies these criticisms in three categories. The first centres on the problematic nature
of the notion of “mainstream”, as it implies existence of a more or less homoge-
neous and cohesive social environment. The second emphasizes the importance of
structural inequalities (e.g., discrimination on the housing and labour markets),
which could slow or even bar immigrants’ integration. The third category of criti-
cism points to the plurality of integration processes, as they depend on collective
actors (such as the state and its policies, public opinion, ethnic communities, and
civil society) and contextual factors (such as the economic situation). Common to
these areas of criticism is the claim that the receiving society, including civil society
organizations and the state, does matter in immigrants’ integration (Unterreiner &
Weinar 2014, 2).
4 B. Garcés-Mascareñas and R. Penninx

This claim has gradually been confirmed by empirical research on immigrants’

integration. While most studies before the 1980s focused on the micro-level of indi-
vidual migrants and their households, research since the 1990s has given increasing
attention to the meso-level of organizations (of migrants themselves and of civil
society in general) and the macro-level of structural factors (see Penninx 2013, 15).
These studies coincide in concluding that the receiving society matters at three lev-
els: that of individuals (e.g., the attitudes and behaviour of native individuals); that
of organizations (which can be more or less open towards immigrants); and that of
institutions, both general public institutions and institutions “of and for” immigrant
groups (Penninx 2005, 2007). Cross-national comparisons that examine the same
immigrant group in different national and local contexts enable researchers to assess
the role of contextual factors (e.g., citizenship and welfare policies, integration poli-
cies, and labour market arrangements), adding further explanatory power for differ-
ences in immigrants’ integration outcomes.
Several developments in integration studies have contributed significantly to
improve understanding of the role of the receiving society in immigrants’ integra-
tion. Firstly, research has shown that policy matters, not only policy at the national
level but also that at the regional and local levels. Indeed, these might differ consid-
erably from one another, and stem from very different and even opposed policy
rationales, such as priorities of immigration control and sovereignty at the national
level versus the preservation of social cohesion at the local level. Secondly, while
most studies focus on a specific policy dimension (e.g., the legal-political, the socio-
economic, or the cultural-religious), recent research has highlighted the need to
examine these different policy domains together and take into account other poli-
cies, beyond those specifically targeting immigrants and including those regulating
broader societal institutions. Thirdly and finally, the shift in focus from government
to governance, from policy to policymaking, allows us to conclude that what mat-
ters is not only policy frames and policy measures (i.e., policies as written on the
books) but also how these policies are organized and implemented by the different
actors involved (thus policies in practice) (see Penninx & Garcés-Mascareñas in this
volume).
In recent years, two new approaches have incorporated the perspective of immi-
grants’ countries of origin: transnationalism and the migration and development
framework. The first, transnationalism, transcends the assimilationist assumptions
of earlier migration research (Dunn 2005) to shed light on the ties and activities
developed between individual, collective, and governmental actors located in two or
more countries, mostly in immigrants’ sending and destination countries. Individual
activities range from remittances, investments in the homeland, and donations to
migrant organizations to participation in homeland elections (see Mügge in this
volume). Though the focus on the meso-level is much more limited, the literature on
transnationalism also points to the growing development of linkages between local
governments in sending and destination countries and more or less institutionalized
forms of cooperation between civil society actors, such as immigrant organizations
and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (see Van Ewijk & Nijenhuis in this
volume). Finally, transnationalism has looked at the role of sending states, which
1 Introduction: Integration as a Three-Way Process Approach? 5

have increasingly sought to strengthen relations with emigrant populations, facili-

tating emigrant return, providing overseas consular assistance, and inviting emi-
grant economic and political engagement from afar (see Østergaard-Nielsen in this
volume).
The literature on migration and development considers the effects of migration
on development and vice versa. As demonstrated by King and Collyer in this vol-
ume, a key question is whether migration stimulates development or if there is
instead a reverse causal link, with development leading to migration. Or, perhaps
the relationship is a recursive one, with migration leading to a virtuous circle of
development. Alternatively, we could ask whether underdevelopment produces
migration or migration leads to underdevelopment. Or, perhaps they reproduce one
another, this time in a vicious cycle. If we focus on the effects of migration on devel-
opment, other key questions arise. We might ask who or what is experiencing the
effects: the receiving society, the sending society, the migrants themselves—or all
three in the aspired-for “triple-win” scenario. Are these hypothesized relationships
stable over time? Or, are they likely to change according to historical context, as
well as the geographical setting and scale of analysis (household, community,
nation, etc.)?
While both transnationalism and the migration and development framework have
brought the sending countries into the picture, they have hardly considered their
effects on immigrants’ integration. Similarly, the literature on immigrants’ integra-
tion has paid little attention to the theoretical developments in these two fields. This
book seeks to bridge these areas of research by reviewing the existing literature on
integration, integration policies, transnationalism, and the migration and develop-
ment framework while considering the role of sending states in immigrants’ integra-
tion. Two key questions are posed: First, do immigrants’ transnational activities
reinforce integration and, conversely, is integration facilitated by transnational
links? In other words, is there a trade-off between transnational activities and inte-
gration, meaning that the more focused migrants are on their country of origin, the
less they might identify with and support their country of residence and vice versa?
Second, what is the role of sending states? Are their outreach policies toward emi-
grants abroad counterproductive to policies on migrant incorporation? Or, might
they reinforce each other?

Structure of the Book

Whereas the European Commission has shifted to a three-way process approach

which aims to promote the role of sending countries in immigrants’ integration, the
academic literature has so far continued its almost exclusive focus on the interplay
between immigrants and the receiving society. Drawing on existing studies, this
book addresses this disconnect between policy and academic research by consider-
ing the extent to which the EU’s three-way process approach to integration finds
legitimation in what we know about integration, integration policies, and the role of
6 B. Garcés-Mascareñas and R. Penninx

sending states in immigration and integration processes. In that sense, this book
should be understood as a state-of-the-art volume that takes stock of and presents
existing knowledge to assess the relevance of incorporating the sending states into
analyses of immigrants’ integration processes and policies.
In line with recent approaches to the concept of integration, Chap. 2 by Penninx
and Garcés-Mascareñas sets up an analytical framework for the study of integration
processes and policies. The first part focuses on the concept of integration, introduc-
ing an open, non-normative analytical definition and identifying the main dimen-
sions, parties involved, levels of analysis, and other relevant factors such as time and
generations. The second part defines integration policies and proposes a distinction
between policy frames and concrete policy measures as well as a shift from govern-
ment to governance so as to account for the complex, multilayered and often contra-
dictory character of integration policies. In the broader context of this book, the
analytical framework proposed in this chapter leads us to a twofold conclusion: the
concept of integration and integration policies is made dramatically more complex,
in particular, by taking a disaggregated approach that considers not only multiple
reference populations but also distinct processes occurring in different dimensions
and domains. At the same time, immigrants’ integration continues to be seen essen-
tially as a two-way process involving the immigrants themselves and the receiving
society.
In Chap. 3, Van Mol and De Valk provide a general background to help us to
understand the first key actor of the abovementioned binomial, that is, the immi-
grants themselves. In particular, the authors analyse the main socio-demographic
changes in migration patterns towards and within Europe since the 1950s. Making
use of secondary literature and available statistical data, they first describe the main
phases in immigration, its backgrounds and determinants, depending on immi-
grants’ origins and reasons to migrate and with regard to different European regions.
In the second part of the chapter, the authors narrow the focus to the specificities of
recent patterns of mobility within Europe. Analysing both migration flows and the
residing migrant population across Europe, they distinguish different socio-
demographic characteristics of migrants depending on countries of origin and des-
tination. For instance, while Polish migration to Germany seems to be dominated by
men aged between 20 and 50 years old, Polish immigrants in the Netherlands are
significantly younger and more equally balanced in terms of gender. The analysis of
intra-European mobility shows that in North-Western Europe (e.g., in Denmark,
Germany, and the Netherlands) intra-European migrants account for more than the
half of total immigration, meaning that a substantial proportion of new immigrants
falls outside those categorized as target groups of EU integration policies.
The subsequent three chapters focus on the second actor of the binomial, that is,
the receiving society, particularly the characteristics and main developments of
immigration and integration policies. In Chap. 4, Doomernik and Bruquetas-Callejo
distinguish between different immigration and integration policy regimes in Europe.
The first is that of North-Western European countries, which evolved from guest
worker policies that considered immigrants only as temporary workers to national
integration policies that recognize them as permanent citizens and, more recently, to
1 Introduction: Integration as a Three-Way Process Approach? 7

policies that promote and even increasingly demand immigrants’ cultural assimila-
tion. The second integration regime is that of the Southern European countries,
characterized mainly by labour considerations with much lesser welfare provisions
and a limited number of bottom-up integration initiatives implemented mostly at the
local level. The third regime is that of most Eastern European countries, with their
very low immigration flows and nascent integration policies resulting from the
availability of EU funds rather than from any real societal or political demand.
Finally, the authors refer to a fourth model developed for asylum seekers at the EU
level. Here, there is a clear disconnect between the immigration and integration
regimes. While the EU is developing a common approach to asylum seekers, recep-
tion facilities and integration policies differ considerably among member states.
This chapter’s historical and comparative overview of immigration and integration
regimes in Europe allows the authors to conclude that the reception context can
change tremendously depending on the historical and national contexts.
Chapter 5 by Mügge and Van der Haar focuses on the basic mechanism of cate-
gorization in policymaking and implementation. They show how laws and policies
construct explicit and implicit categories by distinguishing, for instance, between
“wanted” and “unwanted” immigrants or between immigrants “in need of integra-
tion” and immigrants “already integrated” or “beyond integration”. Interestingly,
the chapter concludes that whereas laws and policies distinguish between European
citizens and third-country nationals (TCNs), important hierarchies exist within each
category based on a combination of identity markers such as gender, class, and eth-
nicity. Under what conditions do these policy categories and terms render stereo-
types, prejudices, and potential discrimination, and how does this impact immigration
and integration trajectories? Based on several concrete cases, the authors propose
that immigrants’ integration is shaped not only by explicit integration policies (e.g.,
more or less access to welfare provisions) but also by the way policies explicitly and
implicitly perceive, problematize, and categorize immigrants. This leads, among
other things, to significantly different categorizations of who is in need of integra-
tion at different policy levels (i.e., the EU, national, and local).
Whereas Chaps. 4 and 5 mainly focus on national policies, Chap. 6 by Scholten
and Penninx analyses migration and integration as multilevel policy issues and
explores the consequences in terms of multilevel governance. The fact that both
migration and integration are increasingly becoming multilevel policy issues has
brought opportunities as well as significant challenges, such as the constant struggle
between national governments and the EU about the amount of discretion that states
have in interpreting EU directives and, more recently, involvement of local and
regional governments in debates about intra-EU migration and migrant integration.
With these questions in mind, this chapter offers an analysis of the evolution of
migration and integration policies at various levels over the last decades. This equips
us to understand the factors that drive policies, the extent to which these create con-
vergence or divergence, and how we can better describe and categorize the relations
between different levels of government.
The last four chapters shift the focus to the sending states and their relationship
with immigrants’ integration. Chap. 7 by Mügge provides a state-of-the-art
8 B. Garcés-Mascareñas and R. Penninx

exposition of European scholarship on the transnationalism–integration nexus. In

particular, it examines how the existing literature views the relation between immi-
grants’ transnational activities and ties to the country of origin, on one hand, and
immigrants’ integration in the receiving country, on the other. The literature review
is guided by a popular political question: Can transnationalism and integration
coexist, or is it a zero-sum relation?
In Chap. 8, Van Ewijk and Nijenhuis examine the link between local govern-
ments in sending and destination countries and the role of immigrant organizations
in translocal connections and activities. Drawing on existing research, the chapter is
guided by three interconnected questions: (i) What kinds of relations can be
observed between local governments and immigrant organizations? (ii) What are
the main driving factors for these relations? (iii) What is the impact of these rela-
tions on sending and receiving societies?
Focusing on sending-country policies, in Chap. 9 Østergaard-Nielsen explores
the twin central questions of how and why countries of origin reach out to their
expatriate populations. This is done, first, by outlining the basic concepts and typol-
ogies of sending-country policies with a particular focus on some of the key coun-
tries of origin of migrants settled within the EU and, second, by reviewing core
explanations for the emergence of sending-country policies. The last part of the
chapter discusses the nexus between sending-country policies and immigrants’
integration.
Finally, Chap. 10 by King and Collyer looks at the relationship between migra-
tion, development, and integration. Focusing on remittances, return migration, and
diaspora involvement, these authors describe analysis of the migration and develop-
ment nexus as having swung between positive and negative interpretations over the
seven decades of the European post-war era. Then the conceptual lens of migration
and development is redefined: first by refocusing migration and return to encompass
a diversity of transnational mobilities, second by reconceptualizing development as
being less about economic measures and more about human wellbeing, and third by
broadening the analysis of remittances from financial transfers to include social,
cultural, and political elements. The final part of the chapter evaluates the relation
between the migration and development frame and the integration frame. In so
doing, it asks how the multifaceted process of integration impacts migrants’ capaci-
ties to stimulate development in their home countries and communities. For those
migrants who return or who lead multi-sited transnational lives, what challenges
does integration present for their reintegration in their countries of origin?
On the basis of the main findings presented on the role of immigrants, the receiv-
ing society, and the sending countries, the concluding chapter returns to the main
issues addressed by this book: (i) how is integration conceptualized and studied in
Europe; (ii) how are integration policies studied, and how is the concept of integra-
tion used in policy formulation and practice; (iii) and how are new perspectives and
actors incorporated in analyses of integration processes and policies. The answers
to these more general questions provide us the background to understand the shift
from a two-way to a three-way process approach in EU policies.
1 Introduction: Integration as a Three-Way Process Approach? 9

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Penninx, R. (2005). Integration of migrants: Economic, social, cultural and political dimensions.
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Chapter 2
The Concept of Integration as an Analytical
Tool and as a Policy Concept

Rinus Penninx and Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas

Introduction

The term integration refers to the process of settlement, interaction with the host
society, and social change that follows immigration. From the moment immigrants
arrive in a host society, they must “secure a place” for themselves. Seeking a place
for themselves is a very literal task: Migrants must find a home, a job and income,
schools for their children, and access to health facilities. They must find a place in a
social and cultural sense as well, as they have to establish cooperation and interac-
tion with other individuals and groups, get to know and use institutions of the host
society, and become recognized and accepted in their cultural specificity. Yet, this is
a two-way process. The host society does not remain unaffected. The size and com-
position of the population change, and new institutional arrangements come into
existence to accommodate immigrants’ political, social, and cultural needs.
The scientific study of the process of settlement of newcomers in a host society
has a long history. Popularized by the Chicago School of urban sociology in the
early twentieth century, it has been approached from different perspectives and
using a variety of concepts. A first area of variation has to do with the object of
study. Whereas some researchers have focused primarily or solely on the newcom-

We thank Christina Zuber for her useful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter
R. Penninx (*)
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Garcés-Mascareñas
GRITIM, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 11

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_2
12 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

ers and (changes in) their ideas and behaviour, others have concentrated instead on
the receiving society and its reactions to newcomers. A second area of differentia-
tion lies in the dimensions of the process of settlement that are considered. Whereas
some researchers have examined the legal and political dimensions of becoming
part of a host society (e.g., legal residence, citizenship, and voting rights), others
have concentrated on the socio-economic dimension (e.g., immigrants’ access to
health care, education, housing, and the labour market) or on cultural-religious
aspects. Finally, the level of analysis has varied from that of individual newcomers
and collective groups of newcomers and civil society to the institutional level, with
questions being asked such as whether immigrant collectives have established their
own institutions in the new society and, conversely, to what extent and how have
institutions of the receiving society reacted to newcomers. While concepts such as
adaptation, acculturation, and assimilation have tended to be focused on the cultural
dimension of immigrants’ settlement, others, such as accommodation, incorpora-
tion, and inclusion/exclusion, have shifted the focus to the host society and concen-
trated on the legal-political and socio-economic dimensions.
All of these approaches and concepts are highly contested within the academic
literature. As for any term that stems from policy documents and debates, their defi-
nitions and the related discussions have been highly normative in nature. In relation
to the concept of integration, the major point of criticism is the fact that it continues
to assume—as did the old conception of assimilation—that immigrants must con-
form to the norms and values of the dominant majority in order to be accepted. This
assumption elevates a particular cultural model, in the USA that of middle-class,
white Protestants of British ancestry, and in many European countries that of a col-
lectively claimed national language, culture, and tradition; a model that expresses the
normative standard towards which immigrants should aspire and by which their
deservingness of membership should continuously be assessed.
Integration is presented not only as a must but also as a straight-line process.
Again, informed by policy discourses and policy goals, many studies of immigrant
integration assume a more or less linear path along which the minority group is sup-
posed to change almost completely while the majority culture is thought to remain
the same. Nonetheless, as Lindo (2005, 11) observes, taking integration as a self-
evident and inescapable process ignores that the ‘complex interplay of culturation,
identification, social status and concrete interaction patterns of individuals may pro-
duce many different “outcomes”, much more varied in fact than a more or less linear
shift from “immigrant” to “host” ways of doing things’.
Finally, the mainstream into which immigrants are expected and said to merge is
seldom clearly defined (Favell 2003; Waldinger 2003). Some scholars argue that the
concept of integration continues to adhere to an essentially functionalist vision of
society in which immigrant success is still charted against a set of taken-for-granted
mainstream norms bounded by the notion of a host society as a wholly self-contained
unit of social processes (Gibney and Hansen 2005). Similarly, Joppke and Morawska
(2003, 3) observe that this concept ‘assumes a society composed of domestic
individuals and groups (as the antipode to “immigrants”) which are integrated nor-
matively by a consensus and organizationally by a state’. More recently, in the
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 13

Dutch context, Schinkel (2010) coincides to note that the very notion of society is
problematic, as it implies the existence of a more or less homogeneous and cohesive
social environment in which only certain types of people—namely migrants—need
to integrate.
Despite being a contested concept, integration continues to be central in many
studies and debates on the settlement of newcomers in host societies. In Europe,
several authors have attempted to strip the concept of its normative character and
build a more open and analytical definition (Hoffmann-Novotny 1973; Esser 1980;
Heckmann 1981, 2015; Penninx 1989, 2005; Bommes 2012). Esser (2004, 46)
defines integration as ‘the inclusion [of individual actors] in already existing social
systems’. For Heckmann (2006, 18), integration is ‘a generations lasting process of
inclusion and acceptance of migrants in the core institutions, relations and statuses
of the receiving society’. According to Bommes (2012, 113), ‘the problem of
migrant assimilation refers to no more (and no less) than the conditions under which
they succeed or fail to fulfil the conditions of participation in social systems’. In
order to work or to gain access to goods, education, rights, and social welfare,
Bommes (ibid.) argues, every individual must have some knowledge of what it
means to work or how to behave as a patient, a client, a pupil, a student, or an appli-
cant. From this perspective, there is no alternative to integration.
Interestingly, all of these approaches have in common the assumption that actors
(immigrants in this case) are partially engaged in multiple autonomous and interde-
pendent fields or systems. This implies a shift away from a holistic approach that
conceptualizes integration into a taken-for-granted reference population—the “core
culture” or national society as a whole—towards a disaggregated approach that con-
siders not only multiple reference populations but also distinct processes occurring
in different domains (Brubaker 2001, 542–544). For instance, Esser (2001, 16)
refers to four dimensions: culturation (similar to socialization), placement (position
in society), interaction (social relations and networks), and identification (belong-
ing). Similarly, Heckmann and Schnapper (2003) distinguish between structural
integration, cultural integration (or acculturation), interactive integration, and iden-
tificational integration. From this perspective, integration dynamics and tempos are
viewed as different for each dimension, and processes of structural marginalization
and inequality become key.
In line with these more recent approaches to the concept of integration, this chap-
ter aims to set up an analytical framework for the study of integration processes and
policies. For this purpose, we focus in the first part on the concept of integration,
introducing an open non-normative analytical definition and identifying the main
dimensions, parties involved, levels of analysis, and other relevant factors such as
time and generations. In the second part, we define integration policies and propose
a distinction between policy frames and concrete policy measures as well as a shift
from government to governance in order to account for the complex, multi-layered,
and often contradictory character of integration policies. The conclusion returns to
the concepts of integration and integration policies and suggests lines for further
research.
14 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

The Study of Integration Processes1

A Definition of the Concept

We define integration as “the process of becoming an accepted part of society”. This

elementary definition is intentionally open in two regards. First, it emphasizes the
process character of integration rather than defining an end situation. Second, in
contrast to the normative models developed by political theorists, it does not specify
beforehand the degree of or even the particular requirements for acceptance by the
receiving society. This makes the definition highly useful for empirical study of
these processes. Measuring the degree of becoming an accepted part of society will
allow us to capture the diversity of (stages of) the process. We do need to specify
within this basic definition what should be measured; that is, what are the indicators
of integration and where might we find them.

Three Dimensions

The basic definition of integration encompasses three analytically distinct dimen-

sions in which people may (or may not) become an accepted part of society: (i) the
legal-political, (ii) the socio-economic, and (iii) the cultural-religious. As pointed
out by Entzinger (2000), these dimensions correspond to the three main factors that
interplay with immigration and integration processes: the state, the market, and the
nation. Focusing on these dimensions instead of the ones mentioned earlier (e.g.,
culturation, placement, interaction, and identification) allows us to shift the focal
point from immigrants to their relationship with a host society. The question is not
only what immigrants do, with whom do they interact, and how do they identify
themselves, but as much whether they are accepted and how they are positioned in
each of our three dimensions.
The legal-political dimension refers to residence and political rights and sta-
tuses. The basic question here is whether and to what extent are immigrants regarded
as fully-fledged members of the political community. The position of an immigrant
or the “degree of integration” has two extreme poles. One of these is the position of
the irregular immigrant who is not part of the host society in the legal-political
sense, though perhaps being integrated in the other two dimensions. The other is the
position of the immigrant who is (or has become) a national citizen. In between
there is enormous variety, which has increased in recent decades as a consequence
of attempts of European states to “regulate” international migration and the new
statuses and rights stemming from the EU migration regime (among others, EU
nationals versus third-country nationals or “TCNs”).

1
This section expands on Penninx 2005 and 2007.
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 15

The socio-economic dimension refers to the social and economic position of

residents, irrespective of their national citizenship. Within this dimension, the posi-
tion of immigrants can be analysed by looking at their access to and participation in
domains that are crucial for any resident. Do immigrants have equal access to insti-
tutional facilities for finding work, housing, education, and health care? Do they use
these facilities? What is the outcome of immigrants’ participation compared to that
of natives with the same or comparable qualifications? Since needs and aspirations
in these domains are relatively universal (basic needs are largely independent of
cultural factors), access to and participation of immigrants and natives in these areas
can be measured comparatively. The outcomes, particularly when they are unequal,
provide useful inputs for policies.
The cultural-religious dimension pertains to the domain of perceptions and
practices of immigrants and the receiving society as well as their reciprocal reac-
tions to difference and diversity. If newcomers see themselves as different and are
perceived by the receiving society as culturally or religiously different, they may
aspire to acquire a recognized place in these respects. For their part, the receiving
society may or may not accept cultural or religious diversity. Here again we find two
extremes. At one extreme, new diversity may be rejected and immigrants required
to adapt and assimilate into mono-cultural and mono-religious societies. At the
other extreme, ethnic identities, cultures, and worldviews may be accepted on an
equal level in pluralistic societal systems. Between these two extremes again are
many in-between positions, such as accepting certain forms of diversity in the pri-
vate realm but not, or only partly, in the public realm.
This third dimension, and the specific positions of immigrants and immigrant
groups, is more difficult to measure, basically for two reasons. Firstly, it is less
about objective differences and diversity (ethnic, cultural, and religious) than about
perceptions and reciprocal normative evaluations of what is defined as different and
the consequences of such categorizations. Categorizations may become stereotypes,
prejudices, and ultimately part of immutable racist ideologies. Moreover, the basis
of categorizations may change. For example, in the guest worker period (1960–
1975), the fact that an increasing share of immigrant workers were Muslims was not
seen as relevant. It was only from the 1990s forward that such migrants and their
families were categorized as coming from Muslim countries. Secondly, categoriza-
tions and reciprocal perceptions manifest differently at different levels (i.e., at the
individual, collective, and institutional levels), and their consequences may also
differ. If contacts between individuals are coloured by prejudice, interactions may
be uncomfortable but have a limited impact. Yet, at the institutional level, if employ-
ers base their recruitment of workers on stereotyped or prejudiced perceptions and
procedures, the consequences for individual immigrants may be quite negative.
It is important to realize that these three dimensions are not fully independent of
one another. The legal-political dimension may condition the socio-economic and
the cultural-religious dimensions (represented by arrows in Fig. 2.1). From the per-
spective of individual immigrants, factors such as illegal residence, extended uncer-
tainty about future residence rights (compounded in the case of asylum seekers by
long-term dependence on charity or the state), and lack of access to local and/or
16 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

national political systems and decision-making processes have negative implica-

tions for opportunities and participation in the socio-economic and political realms.
From the perspective of the receiving society, exclusionary policies are an expres-
sion of a general perception of immigrants as outsiders, which inevitably adversely
affects immigrants’ integration. The cultural-religious dimension may similarly
impact the socio-economic dimension (represented by another arrow in Fig. 2.1).
For example, negative perceptions of certain immigrants may lead to prejudice and
discrimination by individuals, organizations, or institutions in the receiving society,
and this may reduce immigrants’ opportunities—even if access is legally guaran-
teed—in domains such as housing, education, health care, and the labour market.

Two Parties

Having defined the dimensions of the process of integration of newcomers into an

established society and how to measure them, the next question is who are the rel-
evant parties involved? Firstly, there are the immigrants themselves, with their vary-
ing characteristics, efforts, and degrees of adaptation (the left part of Fig. 2.1).
Secondly, we find the receiving society, with its characteristics and reactions to

Immigrants Interaction Receiving Society

Legal/Political
Dimension
Individual Individual

Collective / Socio-Economic Collective /

Group Dimension Group

Institutions Institutions
Cultural/Religious
Dimension

Fig. 2.1 A heuristic model for the empirical study of integration processes (Source: Authors)
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 17

newcomers (the right part of Fig. 2.1). It is the interaction between the two, how-
ever, that determines the direction and the temporal outcomes of the integration
process. However, these two “partners” are fundamentally unequal in terms of
power and resources. The receiving society, especially its institutional structure and
reaction to newcomers, is far more decisive for the outcome of the process than the
immigrants themselves are.

Three Levels and Indicators

Processes of immigrants’ integration take place and can be measured at different

levels. The first level is that of individuals, both migrants and natives of the receiv-
ing society. For the first dimension, immigrants’ integration at the individual level
can be measured in terms of their legal status and political participation. For the
second dimension, we can look at their socio-economic integration and position in
the “hard” domains of housing, work, education, and health. For the third dimen-
sion, we would measure their identification with a specific cultural-religious group
and with the receiving society, as well as their cultural and religious practices and
how these are valued. In our conceptual definition of integration, we should also
measure the attitudes and behaviour (or acceptance) of native individuals towards
newcomers and the consequences of these.
The second level is that of organizations. There are the organizations of immi-
grants, which mobilize resources and ambitions of the group. These organizations
may be strong or weak; they may orient themselves primarily towards (certain
aspects of participation in) the receiving society or to specific cultural and religious
needs of the group. They may become an accepted part of civil society—and a
potential partner for integration policies—or isolate themselves or be excluded by
the host society. There are also organizations of the receiving society. Their extent
of openness to newcomers, their perceptions of and behaviour towards individual
immigrants, and their organizations might be of crucial importance for immigrants’
integration. Research has shown, for example, that with the absence of governmen-
tal integration policy in Germany until 2002, nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), particularly trade unions and churches, played a crucial role in the integra-
tion processes of guest workers and their families (Penninx and Roosblad 2000).
The third level is that of institutions, understood as standardized, structured, and
common ways of acting in a socio-cultural setting. Two kinds of institutions are of
particular relevance. The first are the general public institutions of the receiving
society in the three dimensions: institutional arrangements of the political system;
institutional arrangements in the labour market, housing, education, and public
health; and institutional arrangements for cultural and religious diversity. Laws,
regulations, and executive organizations, but also unwritten rules and practices, are
part of these institutions. Though general institutions are supposed to serve all citi-
zens in an equal manner, they may impede access or equitable outcomes for immi-
grants. They may exclude immigrants formally, either completely—as does the
18 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

political system of most countries—or partially—as when social security and wel-
fare systems offer only limited services to non-citizens. Yet, even if access for all
residents is guaranteed by law, institutions may hamper access or equitable out-
comes by virtue of historically- and culturally-determined ways of operating, for
instance, by failing to take into account immigrants’ history, their cultural and reli-
gious backgrounds, or their language abilities. Thus, adequate functioning of gen-
eral public institutions—and their potential to adapt to growing diversity—is
paramount. At this level, integration and exclusion are “mirror concepts” (see
Penninx 2001).
The second type of institution that is particularly relevant for immigrants’ inte-
gration is institutions specifically “of and for” immigrant groups, such as certain
religious or cultural ones. Unlike general institutions, the value and validity of any
group-specific institution is confined to those who voluntarily choose and adhere to
them. Although their place is primarily in the private sphere, group-specific institu-
tions may also manifest themselves as civil society actors in the public realm, as
shown by the history of churches, trade unions, and cultural, leisure, and profes-
sional institutions in European cities and states. Some migrant-specific institutions
may become an accepted part of society, equivalent to institutions of native groups.
Others, however, might either isolate themselves or remain unrecognized or even
excluded.
Different mechanisms operate at the individual, organizational, and institutional
levels, but the outcomes at all of these levels are clearly interrelated. Institutional
arrangements largely determine organizations’ opportunities and scope for action,
and they may exert significant influence on how immigrant organizations develop
and orient themselves. Institutions and organizations, in turn, together create the
structure of opportunities and limitations for individuals. Conversely, individuals
may mobilize to change the landscape of organizations and may even contribute to
significant changes in general institutional arrangements. In view of the uneven
distribution of power and resources noted above, such examples are scarce but they
are not nonexistent.

Time and Generations

The heuristic model developed and explained above may be used as a tool to
describe and analyse the position of individual immigrants and groups of immi-
grants at a certain point in time. But an important element in the logic of integration
processes is the time factor. Integration of newcomers is a long-term process by its
very nature. This immediately becomes apparent if we look through the lens of
newcomers. At the individual level, adult immigrants may adapt cognitively and
adjust their behaviour when they learn how things are done, by whom, and so on.
This part is relatively easy and pays off quickly. However, their adaptation in the
aesthetic (relating to the five senses) and normative realms takes more time.
Feelings, likes, dislikes, and perceptions of good and evil remain rather persistent
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 19

over a lifetime. Though this may be a general pattern for all human beings, it
becomes especially manifest in those who have changed their environment through
migration (for an overview of these aspects of the adaptation process see Van
Amersfoort 1982, 35 ff.).
The situation of the descendants of immigrants generally differs in this respect.
Although they do become familiarized with the immigrant community and possibly
its pre-migration background through their primary relations in family and immi-
grant community networks, they simultaneously become thoroughly acquainted
with the culture and language of the society of settlement, not only through informal
neighbourhood contacts starting in early childhood but especially through their par-
ticipation in mainstream institutions, particularly the education system. If such a
double process of socialization takes place under favourable conditions (in which
policies can play an important role), these second-generation young people develop
a way of life and lifestyle that integrates the roles, identities, and loyalties of these
different worlds and situations. Because the ways of doing this are manifold, more
and more differentiation develops within the original immigrant group. At the group
level, this means that the litmus test for integration as an end result (being an
accepted part of society)—and hence for the success or failure of policies in this
field—lies in the situation of the second generation in the host society.
In principle we can grasp the time factor by carrying out and comparing descrip-
tive analyses of individuals and groups of immigrants at different points in time. In
doing this, we should be cognizant of findings of previous historical comparative
analyses. First, research indicates that integration processes are neither linear nor
unidirectional. Although we have indicated before that the situation of migrants
(first generation) differs significantly from that of their children and grandchildren,
this does not imply that integration is the inevitable eventual outcome. On the con-
trary, the literature shows that setbacks may occur. Second, we should keep in mind
that integration may progress at different paces in the three dimensions and even
within a single dimension—for example, labour market integration may take longer
than integration in the health care system. Third, we should not forget the receiving
society, which changes with immigration and has to adapt its institutions to immi-
grants’ needs. For societies without a recent history of immigration or diversity, the
process may be more demanding and therefore require more time than in immigra-
tion societies.

The Study of Integration Policies

A Definition of the Concept

The study of policies is fundamentally different from the study of integration pro-
cesses. The essence of policies is the intention to guide and steer processes in soci-
ety, in our case, integration processes of immigrants. Explicit integration policies
are part of a normative political process in which the issue of integration is
20 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

formulated as a problem, the problem is given a normative framing, and concrete

policy measures are designed and implemented to achieve a desired outcome. Other
generic policies not specifically targeting immigrants (such as the education and
health care systems, housing, the labour market, and the public regulation of reli-
gion) may exert strong influence (positive or negative) on integration processes of
immigrants. Therefore, a systematic analysis of integration policies should go
beyond integration policies in the strict sense.

Frames

When studying integration policies, the first question to be analysed is how different
political and social actors perceive immigrant integration in terms of policy frames
and policy shifts. A frame is a reconstruction of the problem definition of a policy
issue, including the underlying assumptions of the problem’s causes and possible
remedies for it. This means looking at how the problem is actually defined and
explained and at what is thought could and should be done about it. The problem
definition takes into consideration how immigration is perceived: Is it seen as a
problem or as opportunity? Who has the moral or legal right to be or become an
immigrant? Who are the wanted immigrants, and who are the unwanted? For those
immigrants already present in the host society, a basic question is whether they are
seen as “foreigners”, as “temporary guests”, or as permanent members of society
for whom the state accepts the same responsibilities as for native citizens, guaran-
teeing the same rights and providing the same facilities.
Once the problem has been defined, the next step is considering what should be
done. In some cases, a state or a city may choose to ignore immigrants’ presence
and therefore avoid any special responsibility for them. This choice for a non-policy
response should be understood as a policy in itself (see Hammar 1985, 277–278;
Alexander 2007, 37 ff). In other cases, new policies may be formulated to cater for
certain immigrants’ needs but under specific conditions due to the alleged tempo-
rary nature of their stay. Under this guest worker approach immigrants’ otherness
may be “tolerated” and even encouraged though their residence rights may be cur-
tailed in the long run. Finally, if immigrants are perceived as permanent residents,
inclusion is the main response. This takes different forms, however. Coinciding with
the model on integration policies proposed by Entzinger (2000), integration policies
may differ significantly with regard to the three dimensions of immigrants’ integra-
tion identified earlier; that is, the legal-political dimension, the socio-economic
dimension, and the cultural-religious dimension.
In terms of the first dimension, legal recognition and political participation, poli-
cies may recognize immigrants as permanent foreign residents (the so-called “deni-
zens”), thus incorporating them socially but limiting their political rights, or
immigrants may be accepted as full citizens, thus removing all barriers for and even
promoting naturalization. In terms of equality, the socio-economic dimension,
specific policy measures may be devised catering for immigrants’ interests and
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 21

needs, or policies may merely address the common interests of citizens in general.
Finally, in terms of diversity, the cultural-religious dimension, policies may be
designed under two very different premises. The first is that integration demands the
adaptation and learning of immigrants but also significant changes in access to and
the working of institutional structures of the host society. The second is that societal
rules and structures, including underlying norms and values, should be taken as a
given and immigrants should (voluntarily or even as a mandatory task) adapt to
them.
Finally, the third question to be addressed is for whom are integration policies
meant. Migrant integration policies that designate specific groups of immigrants as
target groups are different from policies that focus on all immigrants and are even
more distinct from policies targeting all individuals regardless of their origin or
targeting natives, established civil society, and the general institutions of society. In
practice, these different approaches result in very different policies, again with
regard to the three dimensions of integration: Political rights can be granted to
immigrants as individuals, for instance, by granting voting rights, or as groups,
which often means the creation of representative bodies. Policies may seek to pro-
mote equal opportunities for all citizens, meaning equal access to housing, educa-
tion, health care, and the labour market, or they may seek to promote an equal share
in access to these goods and services. Finally, cultural diversity can be promoted as
an individual or group right, the latter often implying state support to immigrants’
own organizations and institutions.
Frames cannot always be analysed directly; they often have to be reconstructed
from policy documents and political discourse. When a policy is defined, it gener-
ally includes an explicit formulation of the perceived problem and the desired out-
come of the specific efforts encompassed by the policy. Thus, politically debated
statements in and about policy documents contain the essential elements of policy
frames. The most important elements to be studied and compared are the general
assumptions and orientations about the causes of the problem and remedies as well
as basic concepts used (or explicitly rejected); the general aims of policies and
dimensions of integration addressed; and the definition of the main target groups.

Policy Measures

Policy documents may be closer to policy discourse than to policy practice. In this
regard, it is fundamental to complement any study of policy frames with a concrete
and detailed analysis of actual policy measures. This means looking at the pro-
grammes in place and again identifying in which of the three dimensions of integra-
tion they are to be categorized, what their main goals are, and who they target. As
said before, the study of integration policies cannot in general be limited to analysis
of explicit integration policy measures. Programmes addressing the population as a
whole or specific socio-economic groups within it, regardless of whether they are of
immigrant origin, as well as general institutional arrangements in areas such as
22 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

education, health care, housing, and the labour market, may be as fundamental (or
even more) in fostering (or not) the integration of immigrants. Neither should we
overlook how these policy measures are implemented in practice or to what extent
and how street-level bureaucrats, practitioners, and professionals adapt them to their
own goals and possibly limited resources.
In this regard, the study of policy measures entails a triple difficulty: (i) we must
go beyond integration policy measures in the strict sense, which greatly expands the
field of study; (ii) policy measures are seldom described in official documents and
therefore are difficult to trace; and (iii) programmes are often constituted of a set of
unwritten norms and practices which may vary across time and space. A way to
overcome these difficulties is by conducting extensive fieldwork and, especially,
interviews with the main actors involved: policymakers at the different administra-
tive levels, practitioners and professionals in the different social areas, NGOs, and
immigrant organizations. When focusing on policy measures, it is also key to exam-
ine the budgets allocated in each programme in order to get a concrete picture of
what actually is being done. Interestingly, policy frames and policy measures may
differ significantly in their goals, the dimensions of integration addressed, target
groups, actors involved, and resources available.

Governance

Once we have identified the main policy frames and policy measures, the next ques-
tion is how integration policies are organized and implemented. Regarding organi-
zation, two aspects are relevant. The first is whether the implementation of policies
by civil servants and other actors is directly steered and controlled by politics or
whether there is a relatively large gap between politics and policy. In highly politi-
cized contexts, what politicians say and what actually is being done may differ
significantly. The second aspect of concern is the location of the initiating and coor-
dinating force for migrant integration within the governmental administration: Is it
centrally located and coordinated by a specific ministry or department (i.e., home
affairs, social affairs, or employment)? Or is it decentrally organized across all of
the areas relevant to integration policies. Such questions also apply to regional and
local policies (Caponio and Borkert 2010).
If we want to examine not only how policies are organized but also how they are
formulated and implemented, we should shift the focus from government to gover-
nance. This means taking into account a wider range of actors, including other
administrative levels such as regional and local governments; other institutions,
agencies, and practitioners within the state apparatus; and other relevant actors,
such as politicians, NGOs, and private institutions. The vertical dimension of inte-
gration policymaking, that is, the relationship between the national, regional, and
local levels, is of particular importance, as both municipalities and the European
Union (EU) level have become increasingly involved in the making of immigrant
policies. This multiplicity of levels should be analysed in detail so as to understand
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 23

how new tensions have come to the fore but also how new alliances and forms of
cooperation (e.g., between the local and the EU level) have developed. Various key
questions can be asked: Who is in charge of integration policies? How are the dif-
ferent levels coordinated? Do they respond to different political and social impera-
tives? Do they complement or contradict one another?
Also to be considered is the horizontal dimension of integration policymaking,
meaning whether and how integration policies are implemented by the full range of
relevant actors, from private institutions to NGOs, immigrant organizations, and
professionals. The central question here is who is supposed to be a relevant actor in
policies. With respect to immigrants, are individual immigrants seen as primary
actors? Are their organizations and other collective and institutional resources
regarded as relevant? Looking at the receiving society, what main actors are
involved, again at the individual, organizational, and institutional levels? Research
on Southern Europe has shown that when governmental integration policies are
absent, civil society actors (such as trade unions, NGOs, charities, and civil move-
ment associations) may become key in providing various services and offering
political support for immigrants’ rights claims (Campomori 2005; Zincone 1998).
At the same time, as noted by Caponio (2005), such mobilization may produce a
“crowding out” effect wherein native associations mobilizing on behalf of immi-
grants actually become the main recipients of municipal funding and partners in
policymaking. Immigrants may thus be prevented from forming their own
organizations.

Politics and Time

In democratic societies, policies are part of a political system in which the majority
decides. This brings an inherent danger of either a virtual absence of explicit inte-
gration policies and an avoidance of issues related to immigrants or one-sided
patronizing policies reflecting mainly majority interests and disregarding the needs
and voices of immigrants. Whereas in some European countries policymakers have
been able to craft policies “behind closed doors” to extend political and social rights
to migrants (Guiraudon 2000), in others anti-immigrant political parties have suc-
ceeded in vetoing liberal reforms and urging their governments to adopt more
restrictive immigration and integration policies. An extreme case is Switzerland,
where referendums can even overrule the supreme court and possibly mandate
reform of the constitution, thus undermining the main tools that protect religious
and ethnic minorities of immigrant origins against discrimination (D’Amato 2012).
As integration policies are adopted and implemented in practice, another aspect
of the logic of policymaking emerges. Although integration processes are long term
in nature—they take at least a generation—the political process in democratic soci-
eties requires that policies bear fruit within much shorter timeframes: the spaces
between elections. Such a policymaking context may lead politicians to make
unrealistic promises that cannot be fulfilled in such a short period. This “democratic
24 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

impatience” in turn often produces disappointment and backlash effects (Vermeulen

and Penninx 1994). The debate on the alleged failure of integration policies—and of
immigrants to integrate—that has been taking place in the Netherlands since 2000
is a good example (Prins and Saharso 2010). Even more difficult than democratic
impatience are situations in which anti-immigrant sentiments are translated into
political movements, leading to strong politicization of the topics of immigration
and integration.

Comparison as a Tool

Integration Processes

If the immigrant integration process is propelled by interactions between immi-

grants and the receiving society at the different levels, within the three dimensions
and taking into account the time factor, the best way to explain diversity in out-
comes is through comparative empirical studies. There are two main types of com-
parisons, each measuring different elements of our heuristic model. In the first
category are studies that compare the integration processes of different immigrant
groups in the same institutional and policy context of a nation or a city. Such studies
reveal that different immigrant groups may follow different paths of integration. For
example, in the Netherlands, Vermeulen and Penninx (2000) show that Moluccan,
Surinamese, Antillean, Southern European, Turkish, and Moroccan immigrants dif-
fer in the speed of their integration and in the pathways they follow. Whereas some
groups (e.g., the Chinese and Portuguese) have been quick to use the education
system as a route to social mobility, other groups (such as the Turks) were more
strongly involved in entrepreneurship. The consequence of such comparison is that
the factors found to explain differences lie primarily in the characteristics of the
various immigrant groups (thus, the left side of our heuristic model), simply because
the national or local context into which immigrants are being integrated is the same.
A second category of comparative studies examines the integration of the same
immigrant groups in different national or local immigration contexts. Koopmans
(2010), for example, investigates the effects of integration policies and welfare state
regimes on the socio-economic integration of immigrants in eight European coun-
tries. The comparison leads this author to conclude that multicultural policies, when
combined with a generous welfare state, produce low levels of labour market par-
ticipation, high levels of segregation, and a strong overrepresentation of immigrants
among those convicted for criminal behaviour. Another study of this kind is The
Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) project, a comparative anal-
ysis of the position of the children of Turkish, Moroccan, and Yugoslavian immi-
grants in 15 cities in eight European countries (Crul et al. 2012). That research
asked how we might explain the higher educational attainment of second-generation
Turks in Sweden and France compared to that in Germany and Austria, and why
attainments are different when it comes to access to and integration into the labour
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 25

market. One of its conclusions is that the contextual conditions created by institu-
tions (e.g., schooling arrangements and labour market, citizenship, and welfare
policies) are paramount to explain differences in educational and labour outcomes.
Comparisons examining the same groups in different contexts tend to find the main
explanatory factors residing in the receiving society and mostly at the institutional
level (the right side of Fig. 2.1).

Integration Policies

Comparative studies are also a tool to understand what conditions account for the
emergence of different integration policy models as well as the factors that explain
recent trends of convergence in both policies and practices. To explain such differ-
ences, various typologies have been developed. One of the most cited is the study by
Brubaker (1992) of citizenship policies in France and Germany arguing that the
different nation-building histories of France and Germany have led to distinctive
conceptions of citizenship. Focusing on the degree of accommodation or acceptance
of minority group cultures, another highly cited categorization is that by Castles
(1995), which distinguishes between differential exclusion, assimilation, and plu-
ralism. Though these typologies are based on rich historical accounts of integration
policy development in different European countries, their relevance has been
increasingly questioned. The multitude of national models of integration policies in
existence has been criticised for overlooking the importance of the transnational and
local levels as well as for minimizing internal incoherencies and changes over time.
During the past decade, comparative studies have rendered the analysis and
explanation of integration policies significantly more complex by taking into
account the supranational (particularly European), regional, and local levels; by
focusing on particular policy domains; and by examining the impact of a set of
compound factors such as politics and the party system, the constitutional courts
and judiciary power, welfare state regimes, and the role of civil society, the media,
experts, and civil servants. At the local level, Alexander (2003, 2007) was one of the
first scholars to look at the city as the central unit of comparison, building a theoreti-
cal model to explain local policy reactions to migrant settlement over time and
across a wide spectrum of cities and policy domains. Based on the concept of “host–
stranger” relations, he distinguished four types or phases of local policies: a non-
policy, a guest worker policy, an assimilationist policy, and a pluralist policy.
Though Alexander’s typology has been criticised as teleological, as well as for pay-
ing insufficient attention to policymaking and implementation (Caponio 2010), his
comparative model is still a key reference in the literature on local integration
policies.
An early example of comparative studies on particular policy domains is the
comparison of the institutionalization of Islam in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the
UK in the post-war period by Rath et al. (2001). Among the questions posed by that
research were to what extent are Muslims being given the opportunity to set up their
26 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

institutions according to their own agenda and how are public manifestations of
Islam regulated, like mosque building and Islamic religious education in schools?
These authors find significant variation in the institutionalization of Islam in timing,
content, and direction in the three countries considered and between different cities.
Looking at policy implementation and bureaucratic practices, comparative studies
show important trends towards convergence. Particularly with regard to access to
services, civil servants, NGOs, and professionals seem to respond similarly to simi-
lar everyday pressures, regardless of very distinct policy contexts. For instance, in a
study of how Amsterdam and Berlin policymakers and policy practitioners deal
with youth unemployment among immigrant groups, Vermeulen and Stotijn (2010)
point to important similarities in terms of targeting relevant groups regardless of
whether local governments pursued general or targeted policies.

Conclusion

We opened this chapter with a paradox: While many scholars reject the concept of
integration arguing that it is highly normative and teleological in nature, the concept
of integration nonetheless continues to be central in many studies and academic
debates. How can we solve this contradiction? How can we study the process of
settlement of newcomers in host societies and policies aiming to foster this process
without falling into the pitfalls of the old assimilation/integration approach? With
these questions in mind, this chapter presented a heuristic model for the non-
normative, analytical study of both integration processes and policies. First, we pro-
posed a disaggregated approach to the concept of integration, distinguishing three
dimensions (the legal-political, the socio-economic, and the cultural-religious), two
parties (the immigrants and the receiving society), and three levels (individuals,
organizations, and institutions). Second, for the study of integration policies, we
suggested taking into account policy frames, concrete policy measures, and both the
vertical and horizontal aspects of integration policymaking.
While the use of this heuristic device enables a systematic and analytic descrip-
tion of integration processes and policies, comparison is key when aiming to explain
differences (and similarities) in outcomes. In the past decade, a number of research
projects have compared integration processes by focusing either on different immi-
grant groups in the same national or local context or on the same immigrant group
in different contexts. Integration policies have also been objects of comparison.
While most early studies focused exclusively on the national level, more recent
approaches have taken into account the supranational and local levels, particular
policy domains, and concrete implementation practices by street-level bureaucrats
and practitioners. Though these researches have significantly contributed to the
understanding of integration processes and policies, there is still much to be done.
Looking at integration processes, new systematic comparative analyses might
shed more light on how particular immigrant cultures and migratory histories on the
one hand, and general public institutions and immigrant policies on the other, shape
2 The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept 27

integration outcomes. If we look at integration policies, comparisons between differ-

ent cities and regions in the same country and in different countries are key to enable
us to understand not only local and regional policy responses but also the relation-
ship between the national, regional, and local levels. Despite difficulty in terms of
fieldwork, more research is also needed on policy implementation practices.
Comparisons of these will enable us to elucidate and understand important differ-
ences between policies as written and policies as practised as well as to identify and
explain trends of convergence in this regard. Finally, while comparative research on
integration processes has been done in North America and Europe, most compara-
tive research on integration policies has been limited to Europe. Going beyond these
traditional geographies of comparative studies will be essential to understand how
more significant differences in terms of nationhood, welfare state, or public and
immigrant policies can lead to different outcomes in terms of integration processes.
Looking in from the geographic outside may help to definitively strip the concept of
integration of its normative and, above all, Western-centric character.

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Chapter 3
Migration and Immigrants in Europe:
A Historical and Demographic Perspective

Christof Van Mol and Helga de Valk

Introduction

This chapter outlines the general developments of migration within and towards
Europe as well as patterns of settlement of migrants since the 1950s. We take as our
starting point the bilateral labour migration agreements signed by several European
countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Three main periods can be distinguished from this
point onwards. The first, up to the oil crisis in 1973–1974, was characterized by
steady economic growth and development and deployment of guest worker schemes,
(return) migration from former colonies to motherlands, and refugee migration,
mainly dominated by movements from East to West. The second period started with
the oil crisis and ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s. During this
time North-Western European governments increasingly restricted migration, and
migrants’ main route of entrance became family reunification and family formation.
Furthermore, asylum applications increased. By the end of this period, migration
flows had started to divert towards former emigration countries in Southern Europe.
The third period is from the fall of the Iron Curtain until today, with increasing
European Union (EU) influence and control of migration from third countries into
the EU and encouragement of intra-European mobility.
The historical overview presented here stems from a comprehensive literature
study, complemented by an analysis of available statistical data for trends in the last

C. Van Mol (*)

Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute/ KNAW/UG,
The Hague, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
H. de Valk
Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute/ KNAW/UG,
The Hague, The Netherlands
Free University, Brussels, Belgium

© The Author(s) 2016 31

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_3
32 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

decade. It should be noted, however, that statistical data on migration and mobility
in Europe is mostly incomplete, as they are based mainly on reports and registra-
tions of the individuals concerned. Besides, data on immigration and emigration are
not always fully available and are not consistently measured across countries and
time (see, e.g., EMN 2013). This means that the quality of migration data is often
limited (Abel 2010; Kupiszewska and Nowok 2008; Nowok et al. 2006; Poulain
et al. 2006). Several initiatives and projects have been launched to overcome these
problems and promote comparable definitions, statistics, and estimations of missing
data (Raymer et al. 2011). Most of the EU’s current 28 member countries produce
annual statistics on immigration and emigration. However, the information and
level of detail is not yet comparable across countries (for an overview of databanks
and limitations, see Raymer et al. 2011). The final section of this chapter presents
figures on migration and migrants relying mainly on data from three research proj-
ects which aimed to create and improve harmonized and consistent migration data
(Abel and Sander 2014; Raymer et al. 2011, see www.nidi.nl for more information
on the MIMOSA and IMEM projects). The conclusion summarizes the main pat-
terns and discusses some implications of our findings.

Three Periods of Migration in Europe

From the 1950s to 1974: Guest Worker Schemes

and Decolonization

In the period after the Second World War, North-Western Europe was economically
booming. Industrial production, for example, increased by 30 % between 1953 and
1958 (Dietz and Kaczmarczyk 2008). Native workers in this region became increas-
ingly educated, and growing possibilities for social mobility enabled many of them
to move up to white-collar work (Boyle et al. 1998). Local workers could not fill the
vacancies, as labour reservoirs were limited. Furthermore, the local native popula-
tion was no longer willing to take up unhealthy and poorly paid jobs in agriculture,
cleaning, construction, and mining. As a result, North-Western European govern-
ments started to recruit labour in peripheral countries. The main destination coun-
tries were Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, and
Switzerland. The recruited foreign workers were expected to return home after
completing a stint of labour. They therefore tended to be granted few rights and little
or no access to welfare support (Boyle et al. 1998). At the end of this period, most
migrants in North-Western Europe originated from Algeria, Greece, Italy, Morocco,
Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yugoslavia.
Initially, geographical proximity played an important role in the development of
specific migration flows. For example, Sweden recruited labour from Finland, the UK
from Ireland, and Switzerland from Italy. A migration system emerged whereby
peripheral—especially Southern European—countries supplied workers to
North-Western European countries. Migration flows were strongly guided by differ-
ences in economic development between regions characterized by pre-industrial
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 33

agrarian economies and those with highly industrialized economies (Bade 2003;
Barou 2006), both internationally and nationally (e.g., with unskilled workers moving
from Southern Italy towards the industrial centres in Northern Italy). Within the ori-
gin countries, most migrant workers were from poor agricultural regions where there
was insufficient work, such as Northern Portugal, Western Spain, Southern Italy, and
Northern Greece (Bade 2003). However, European governments gradually enlarged
their zones of recruitment to countries outside Europe. One of the main reasons was
the Cold War division of Europe which severely restricted East-West labour mobility.
In West Germany, for example, there was a significant inflow of workers from Greece,
Italy, and Spain, as well as from East Germany. The construction of the Berlin Wall in
1961, however, put a stop to the latter. As a result, West Germany reoriented its
recruitment towards elsewhere. Bilateral agreements were signed with Turkey (1961),
Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965), and Yugoslavia (1968). Other des-
tination countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland fol-
lowed, also signing labour migration agreements with these countries in the 1960s.
In this period, international migration was generally viewed positively because
of its economic benefits (Bonifazi 2008), from the perspective of both the sending
and the receiving countries. In the Mediterranean region, for example, emigration
helped to alleviate pressures on the labour market, as the region was characterized
by significant demographic pressure, low productivity and incomes, and high unem-
ployment (Page Moch 2003; Vilar 2001). A comparison of annual gross national
product per capita in the 1960s illustrates this with US $353 for Turkey, $822 for
Spain, and $1272 for Italy; $1977 for the UK and $2324 for France (Page Moch
2003, 180). Furthermore, migrants’ remittances were expected to benefit the
national economy. In Turkey, for example, the monetary returns of migrants became
a vital element of the economy: the country even experienced economic destabiliza-
tion when labour migration to Germany ended in 1974 (Barou 2006). However,
reasons for origin countries to support emigration went beyond the economic. The
Italian government, for example, considered the labour migration programmes of
North-Western European countries as a way to ‘get rid of the unemployed and to
deprive the socialist and communist parties of potential voters’ (Hoerder 2002,
520).
Estimates of the numbers of individuals that left Italy, Spain, Greece, and
Portugal between 1950 and 1970 vary from 7 to 10 million (Okólski 2012). As can
be seen from Table 3.1, in 1950 immigrant populations were most numerous in
France, the UK, Germany, and Belgium.
Twenty years later, at the beginning of the 1970s, these numbers had increased
substantially in both absolute and relative terms (Table 3.1). One in seven manual
labourers in the UK and one in four industrial workers in Belgium, France, and
Switzerland were of foreign origin in the mid-1970s (Page Moch 2003, not in table).
Eighty per cent of the total foreign stock in 1975 was concentrated in four countries,
namely France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK (Bonifazi 2008).
At the same time, the process of decolonization gave rise to considerable migra-
tion flows towards Europe’s (former) colonial powers. A significant number of
people from the colonies came to Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the UK, and in
the 1970s, Portugal. Many of these (return) migrants were juridically considered
34 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

Table 3.1 Minority populations in the main Western-European countries of immigration, 1950–
1975 (thousands and last column % of total population)
As per cent of total
Country 1950 1960 1970 1975 population 1975
Belgium 354 444 716 835 8.5
France 2128 2663 3339 4196 7.9
West Germany 548 686 2977 4090 6.6
Netherlands 77 101 236 370 2.6
Sweden 124 191 411 410 5.0
Switzerland 279 585 983 1012 16.0
United Kingdom 1573 2205 3968 4153 7.8
Source: Castles et al. (2014, 108). See Castles et al. (1984, 87–88) for detailed sources
Notes: Figures for all countries except the UK are for foreign residents. They exclude naturalized
persons and immigrants from the Dutch and French colonies. UK data are census figures for 1951,
1961, and 1971 and estimates for 1975. The 1951 and 1961 data are for overseas-born persons and
exclude children born to immigrants in the UK. The 1971 and 1975 figures include children born
in the UK, with both parents born abroad

citizens; estimates suggest that between 1940 and 1975 the number of people of
European origin returning from the colonies was around 7 million (Bade 2003). The
main (return) migration flows were from Kenya, India, and Malaysia to the UK,
from Northern Africa to France and Italy, from Congo to Belgium (although in
smaller numbers), and from Indonesia to the Netherlands (Bade 2003). Some of
these migrants, as for example from the new Commonwealth, came for economic
reasons (Page Moch 2003). Others, such as the Algerian harkis (auxiliaries in the
French colonial army) in France, Asian Ugandans in Britain, and a substantial share
of Surinamese in the Netherlands, arrived during or after independence (ibid.). In
the 1970s, Portugal received a significant number of citizens “returning” from its
former colonies, fleeing from violent combats in the struggle for independence.
Although European migrants returning from the colonies were often quickly able to
insert themselves into the social fabric of the mother country, this was less the case
for those of non-European origin who were economically and socially deprived and
also often discriminated (Bade 2003).
Lastly, the Iron Curtain severely limited East-West mobility. Nevertheless, it did
not bring East-West migration to a complete halt (Fassmann and Münz 1994).
Straddling our period demarcations we discuss these migrations patterns here, as
they started in this period. Between 1950 and 1990, 12 million people migrated
from East to West (Fassmann and Münz 1992), many of them to Germany. Between
1950 and 2004, for example, 4.45 million Aussiedler—ethnic Germans from Central
and Eastern Europe—returned to Germany (Dietz 2006). Until 1988, most of these
Aussiedler migrated from Poland (Dietz 2006; Münz and Ulrich 1998). Nevertheless,
the largest share of these Aussiedler (63 %) arrived after 1989 (Dietz 2006). The
vast majority who came after the fall of the Iron Curtain originated from the former
Soviet Union (Dietz 2006; Münz and Ulrich 1998). Occasionally, however, there
were larger inflows of Eastern Europeans, following political crises such as from
Hungary (1956–1957), Czechoslovakia (1968–1969), and Poland (1980–1981)
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 35

(Castles et al. 2014; Fassmann and Münz 1992, 1994). In line with the logic of the
Cold War, whatever the motives of those who moved to the West, they were consid-
ered to be political refugees (Fassmann and Münz 1994).

From 1974 to the End of the 1980s: The Oil Crisis

and Migration Control

The oil crisis of 1973–1974 had considerable impact on the economic landscape of
Europe. The crisis gave impetus to economic restructuring, sharply reducing the
need for labour (Boyle, Halfacree & Robinson 1998). During this period, belief in
unbridled economic growth diminished. Switzerland and Sweden were the first
countries to invoke a migration stop, respectively, in 1970 and 1972. Others fol-
lowed: Germany in 1973 and the Benelux and France in 1974. Policies aiming to
control and reduce migration, however, transformed rather than stopped migration.
The number of foreign residents kept rising, due to a change in European migra-
tion systems from circular to chain migration and the related natural growth of
migrant populations. Migrants from non-European countries who had come under
labour recruitment schemes increasingly settled permanently, as returning to their
home country for long periods now entailed a significant risk of losing their resi-
dence permit. Many migrants started to bring their families to Europe. Although
governments initially tried to limit family migration, this met little success (Castles
et al. 2014; Hansen 2003). After all, family reunification of migrant workers was
considered a fundamental right, anchored in article 19 of the European Social
Charter of 1961.
The composition of the residing migrant population also changed during this
period. Whereas in the first period, European migrants were most numerous, the
share of non-European migrant populations significantly grew during the second
period. In Sweden, for example, 40 % of the foreign born were non-European by
1999, compared to only 7.6 % in 1970 (Goldscheider et al. 2008). This reflected the
continuing immigration and natural growth of these populations. But it was also the
result of a larger extent of return migration among Southern European populations,
given the increased quality of life and employment opportunities in Southern Europe
(Barou 2006). In countries on the other side of the Mediterranean, population pres-
sure continued to be substantial, due to high fertility and unemployment rates.
During this period, the number of Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and
Yugoslavian foreigners in Europe diminished (except in Switzerland, where the
number of Portuguese and Yugoslavians grew), and a significant increase was
observed in the number of Turks and North Africans across Europe (Bade 2003).
After the migration stop, countries increasingly controlled entries of foreigners,
and migration became an important topic in national political and public debates
(Bonifazi 2008; see also Doomernik & Bruquetas in this volume). Increasing unem-
ployment levels due to the economic recession fuelled hostility, racism, and xenopho-
bia towards certain “visible” groups of resident migrants. In several European
36 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

countries, violent anti-foreigners incidents occurred. In France, for example, Le Pen’s

Front National acquired considerable political support for its simple message that ‘2
million unemployed = 2 million immigrants too many’ (Boyle et al. 1998, 27). During
this period, however, awareness also grew that immigrant populations were here to
stay. As a result, the need for adequate integration policies became apparent, and such
policies slowly started to develop (see Doomernik and Bruquetas in this volume).
In this same phase, numbers of asylum applications started to rise in Europe
(especially in the 1980s and after the fall of the Berlin Wall; Hansen 2003). Between
the early 1970s and the end of the twentieth century the number of asylum applica-
tions in the EU, at that time 15 member states, increased from 15,000 to 300,000
annually (Hatton 2004). Germany was the largest recipient of asylum applications
in Europe in all periods (Table 3.2). From the 1980s onwards, significant increases
were also observed in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK. The different attrac-
tiveness of particular European countries over time is related to historical events
that have induced new refugee flows. The dramatic increase in asylum applications
from within Europe in the early 1990s, for example, accompanied the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslavian wars (Hatton 2004, see also further on in
this chapter).
The restrictions on the entrance of foreigners into North-Western Europe also
had another effect. From the mid-1980s onwards, migration flows increasingly
diverted towards Southern Europe, especially gaining momentum in the 1990s.

Table 3.2 Asylum applications to the EU-15 by destination country, 1970–1999 (thousands)
Years
1970–74 1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995–99
Total EU applications 64.5 213.7 540.2 1012.3 2419.8 1613.5
Austria 8.7 14.7 63.2 64.4 76.1 53.5
Belgium 1.7 6.6 14.5 32.1 87.0 93.4
Denmark 3.7 1.3 5.6 42.1 76.4 36.0
Finland – – 0.1 0.3 11.4 6.9
France 5.1 40.5 106.3 178.7 184.5 112.2
Germany 34.3 121.8 249.6 455.3 1374.7 749.6
Greece 9.2 6.4 24.0 12.8 11.8
Ireland – – – – 0.5 21.2
Italy 11.0 9.2 16.5 26.3 40.8 48.8
Luxembourg – – – – 0.1 5.7
Netherlands – 5.3 8.8 46.4 151.1 170.4
Portugal 0 1.7 4.3 1.3 3.9 1.7
Spain – – 5.4 15.7 53.1 30.4
Sweden – – 41.9 97.1 197.0 48.5
United Kingdom – 3.4 17.5 28.5 150.8 223.3
Source: Hatton (2004, 10). The numbers in Hatton (2004) are based on UNCHR (2001, Tables I.2,
II.2, III.2, IV.2, VI.4, and VI.5)
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 37

Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain had long been emigration countries. As a result,
they did not dispose of well-developed immigration legislation and entrance control
systems. Furthermore, these countries were experiencing economic growth and fall-
ing birth rates, resulting in labour shortages (Castles et al. 2014). The jobs available
were often irregular ones, characterized by unfavourable labour conditions and low
pay, making them unattractive to the local population. Southern Europe thus became
an attractive destination for non-European migrants, especially those from North
Africa, Latin America, Asia, and—after the fall of the Iron Curtain—Eastern Europe
(Castles et al. 2014).
Besides migration flows from non-European countries, the favourable economic
conditions in Southern Europe also resulted in return migration among those who
had moved to Northern Europe. Spain, for example, registered the return of 451,000
citizens during this period, of which 94 % had resided in another EU country (Barou
2006). Portugal, in contrast, experienced return migration from its former colonies,
where fierce and violent struggles for independence were under way. Greece was
the last country to transition from an emigration into an immigration country. Until
1973, some 1 million Greeks were working abroad (Bade 2003). Half of them
returned in the period after the oil crisis (ibid.).

From the 1990s to 2012: Recent Trends in Migration

towards and Within Europe

Patterns of migration from, towards, and within Europe underwent significant

changes and further diversification starting in 1990. The collapse of the Iron Curtain
and the opening of the borders of Eastern Europe induced new migration flows
across Europe. The end of the Cold War, as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia
led to new flows of asylum seekers to Western Europe. Between 1989 and 1992, for
example, asylum applications increased from 320,000 to 695,000, to decline to
455,000 by the end of the decade (Hansen 2003) and increase again to 471,000 in
2001 (Castles et al. 2014). The top-five countries of origin during this period were
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (836,000), Romania (400,000), Turkey
(356,000), Iraq (211,000), and Afghanistan (155,000) (ibid.). In the first decade of
the twenty-first century, new asylum applications followed the conjuncture of
admission restrictions and numbers of violent conflicts (ibid.). Between 2002 and
2006, asylum applications in the EU-15 decreased from 393,000 to 180,000 (ibid.).
From 2006 onwards, however, asylum applications rose due to the conflicts in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently, the Arab Spring. By 2010, the EU-25 plus
Norway and Switzerland had received 254,180 applications, and humanitarian
migration accounted for 6 % of newcomers to the EU (ibid.). Most applications
were made in France (47,800), Germany (41,300), Sweden (31,800), the UK
(22,100), and Belgium (19,900) (OECD 2011, Table A.1.3., cited in Castles et al.
2014, 229).
38 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

The 1992 Maastricht Treaty’s abolition of borders considerably eased intra-EU

movements (see also next sections of this chapter). At the same time, entrance into
the EU became progressively restricted due to the unification of the European mar-
ket, which imposed strict border controls and visa regulations. These controls on the
entrance of foreigners went hand in hand with increased irregular migration (Bade
2003; Bonifazi 2008; Castles et al. 2014). Migrants’ countries of origin as well as
their migration motives became increasingly diversified.
[Nowadays migrants] come to Europe from all over the world in significant numbers: expa-
triates working for multinational companies and international organizations, skilled work-
ers from all over the world, nurses and doctors from the Philippines, refugees and asylum
seekers from African, near Eastern and Asian countries, from the Balkan and former Soviet
Union countries, students from China, undocumented workers from African countries, just
to single out some of the major immigrant categories (Penninx 2006, 8).

During this third period, integration issues became a central policy concern (see
Doomernik & Bruquetas in this volume). Many European countries stepped up
attempts to attract highly skilled or educated migrants. This goal is still reflected
in a number of national programmes today, for example, in Denmark, Germany,
Sweden, and the UK. The EU established its Blue Card Scheme, an EU-wide resi-
dence and work permit (Eurostat 2011). Moreover, student migration from outside
the EU became increasingly important in some parts of the EU (ibid.). Some coun-
tries’ governments have actively recruited students with the intention of incorpo-
rating the “best and brightest” into their domestic labour market upon graduation
(Lange 2013). Institutions of higher education have joined these efforts, stimu-
lated by the economic benefits of attracting international students in the form of
high tuition fees (Findlay 2011). In this context, several European countries, such
as France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK simplified procedures for inter-
national students to make the education-to-work transition (Tremblay 2005; Van
Mol 2014).
In the last section of this chapter, we differentiate between intra-EU mobility of
European citizens and migration within and towards the EU of third-country nation-
als, as these groups are subject to different legislation. Intra-European mobility is
often considered in positive terms, as contributing to the EU’s ‘vitality and competi-
tiveness’ (e.g., EC 2011, 3–4). European citizens, moreover, are entitled to move
freely within the EU without the need for a visa, and hence may face fewer institu-
tional barriers in migration trajectories. Migration into the EU, in contrast, remains
largely associated with active measures of access restriction and border control
(see, e.g., Council of the EU 2002). In recent decades, European migration policy
has thus represented ‘different intersecting regimes of mobility that normalise the
movements of some travellers while criminalising and entrapping the ventures of
others’ (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013, 189). The global economic crisis that
started in 2008 might be considered the end of this third period, as it brought, at
least temporarily, an end to ‘rapid economic growth, EU expansion and high immi-
gration’ (Castles et al. 2014, 103). However, as Castles, De Haas and Miller (ibid.)
observe, the decline in immigration from non-European countries has been rather
modest, and the anticipated mass returns to migrants’ home countries have not
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 39

occurred as yet. The crisis mainly seems to have affected intra-European migration,
with a decrease in overall free movement within the EU and with the peripheral
countries hardest hit by the crisis—particularly Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and
Spain—again becoming emigration countries (Castles et al. 2014).

Migration Towards and from Europe

We first analyse general trends in migration towards Europe, based on new esti-
mates of global migration flows by Abel and Sander (2014). Their figures are based
on stock statistics published by the United Nations. Note, however, that using stock
data might be misleading for measuring flows. Furthermore, although the tables
below represent the best estimates available, they are far from complete, as they are
based on national statistics and thus reflect different legislation and definitions. This
causes, for example, difficulties in comparability between countries as well as over
time. The presented figures should thus be seen as indicative of larger patterns. The
circular plots present migration flows from different world regions towards Europe
and vice versa (Fig. 3.1) for four five-year periods between 1990 and 2010. Broader
lines indicate more sizeable migration flows, while the arrow indicates the direction
of the flow. As can be observed, migration from former Soviet Union countries to
Europe gained momentum after the fall of the Berlin Wall but gradually decreased
thereafter. Migration from Africa to Europe increased, especially in the mid-1990s.
Furthermore, migration from East, South, and South-East Asia and from Latin
America significantly rose, particularly after the start of the twenty-first century.
Finally, migration from North America, Oceania, and West Asia remained relatively
stable. Additional Eurostat data (not in the plots) show that between 2009 and 2012,
the influx of non-EU migrants into the EU decreased slightly, from 1.4 million in
2009 to 1.2 million in 2012 (Eurostat 2014a).
In terms of the stock, 4 % of the total EU population in 2013 was a non-EU
national, accounting for about 6 % of the EU’s total working age population (Eurostat
2014a). Non-EU nationals were evenly split between men and women (ibid.). Note,
however, that these data by nationality do not include all foreign-origin European
residents (meaning those born abroad or having a foreign-born parent), as they cover
only those who did not hold the nationality of the country they resided in. We further
deconstruct these general trends below with a main focus on the last decade.
Looking at the top-15 countries of origin of newly arrived immigrants in 2009
and 2012, we find large numbers of migrants from India and China, followed by
Morocco and Pakistan (Table 3.3). Based on figures from 2008, the majority of
Indian and Pakistani migrants seems to have headed to the UK. Most Chinese
migrants seem to have gone to Spain (Eurostat 2011), and Moroccan migrants were
mainly attracted to Italy and Spain.
In addition to the data on newly arriving immigrants (flow statistics), it is also
relevant to know the main countries of origin of non-European migrants residing in
the EU (stock statistics). When considering the top-10 countries of origin of non-EU
40 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

Fig. 3.1 Circular plots of migration flows towards and from Europe, per 5 year period between
1990 and 2010 (Source: www.global-migration.info)

nationals residing in the EU (Table 3.4), it can be noted that the largest residing
populations are from countries where Europe recruited labour in the post-war period
(Morocco and Turkey), as well as from former colonies (India and Pakistan), and
countries near the EU’s eastern border (Albania, Russia, and Serbia). The large
Chinese diaspora is also prominent as well as the—mostly highly-skilled and life-
style (Castles et al. 2014)—migrants from the USA.
Until the 1990s, the vast majority of migrants could conveniently be classified
under the categories “family reunification”, “labour migration”, and “asylum”.
Since the 1990s, however, migration motives have become increasingly diversified,
including a growing number of young people migrating to attend higher education.
According to Eurostat (2014a), in 2012, 32 % of migrants received a residence per-
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 41

Table 3.3 Top-15 countries of origin of newly arrived non-EU migrants in the EU, 2009 and 2012
2009 2012
Number of Number of
Country of origin migrants Country of origin migrants
1. India 92,575 China (incl. Hong Kong) 87,889
2. Morocco 78,729 India 64,416
3. China (incl. Hong Kong) 65,367 Morocco 53,121
4. Ukraine 47,747 Pakistan 43,108
5. Pakistan 35,969 United States 38,587
6. United States 32,072 Russia 28,807
7. Philippines 29,800 Ukraine 26,068
8. Albania 28,153 Nigeria 21,130
9. Bangladesh 25,611 Australia 19,331
10. Peru 24,740 Brazil 18,307
11. Moldova 24,222 Albania 16,775
12. Brazil 24,204 Philippines 16,748
13. Colombia 23,274 Turkey 16,198
14. Nigeria 21,657 Bangladesh 13,880
15. Russia 21,057 Afghanistan 13,060
Source: Eurostat (2014a)
Note: Numbers refer to non-EU nationals whose previous place of residence was in a non-EU
country and who had established their residence in a EU member state in the respective year

Table 3.4 Top-10 countries Country of origin Number of migrants

of nationality of non-EU
1. Turkey 1,983,240
migrants residing in the
European Union, 2012 2. Morocco 1,384,935
3. China (incl. Hong Kong) 724,428
4. India 650,710
5. Ukraine 634,851
6. Russia 589,634
7. Albania 464,149
8. Serbia 408,491
9. Pakistan 407,133
10. United States 406,266
Source: Eurostat (2014a)
Note: Numbers refer to non-EU nationals whose previous
place of residence was in a non-EU country and who had
established their residence in a EU member state for a period
of at least 12 months
42 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

mit for family reasons, 23 % for work, 22 % for education, and 23 % for other rea-
sons including asylum. Moreover, it should be noted that these categories report
only the main migration motive as captured in the official statistics. In practice,
these categories reflect migration motives as accepted in admission labels. Both
may shift in the course of time. International students, for example, might become
labour migrants upon graduation, and subsequently seek family reunification.
Lastly, migration is often not limited to moving from Country A to Country B but
may involve several successive destinations. Considering intra-EU mobility of
third-country nationals, an upward trend is observed between 2007 and 2011. This
trend is most prominent in Germany, where the number of third-country nationals
arriving from European Economic Area countries more than tripled, from 3784 in
2007 to 11,532 in 2011 (EMN 2013). A similar rise is also observed in the UK,
where numbers increased from 1000 to 3000 (ibid.). Increases seem to be more
modest in other EU countries, such as Austria (33.6 %), Finland (17.1 %), the
Netherlands (53.7 %), and Sweden (30.2 %) (ibid.). However, whereas these per-
centages are high, absolute numbers are generally low. Compared with European
citizens, intra-EU moves of third-country nationals are found to form only a small
share of total intra-EU mobility between 2007 and 2011. The share of non-EU
nationals in these movements barely surpasses 4 % in the countries for which statis-
tics are available: 1.8 % in Germany, 3.6 % in Austria, 3.7 % in Finland, 2.3 % in
the Netherlands, and 1.2 % in the UK (ibid.). Third-country nationals, moreover,
move to geographically close countries, for example, from Germany and Italy to
Austria, from Estonia and Sweden to Finland, from the Czech Republic and
Germany to Poland, from Austria and the Czech Republic to Slovakia, and from
Denmark and Germany to Sweden (ibid.). In sum, although it is often assumed that
linear migration trajectories between two countries are less common now (see, e.g.,
Pieke et al. 2004), non-EU migrants do not seem to move frequently within the
EU. This might be due to the legal restrictions often imposed on this group of
migrants, or it could be more related to factors such as language similarities between
bordering countries (De Valk and Díez Medrano 2014).

Mobility of EU Citizens

Numbers and Destinations

Previous studies indicate that only a small share of the European population is
mobile (Bonin et al. 2008; Pascouau 2013). Favell and Recchi (2009), for example,
show that less than one in fifty Europeans lives abroad, and around 4 % have some
experience of living and working abroad. Nevertheless, the scale of intra-EU mobil-
ity clearly increased between 2000 and 2011 (Fig. 3.2). Data from Eurostat (2011),
for example, show that nearly 2 million EU citizens moved within the EU in 2008.
In absolute numbers, Polish migration made up the greatest share of intra-EU flows
in the first decade of the twenty-first century (Fig. 3.2). Migration between Poland
 a
RO-DE (i)

IT-DE (i)

UK-ES (e)

DE-IT (e)

RO-ES (i)

UK-FR (i)

RO-IT (i)

FR-UK (e)

DE-PL (e)

PL-DE (i)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

i = according to country of immigration; e = according to country of emigration;

DE: Immigration 2000–2003 = 2000, 2002, and 2003;
FR: Immigration and emigration 2000–2003 = 2002–2003;
IT: Immigration and emigration 2000–2003 = 2001–2003;
ES: Emigration 2000–2003 = 2002–2003
Data source: Eurostat, own calculations by NIDI

b
RO-DE (i)

DE-IT (e)

UK-FR (i)

PL-UK (i)

UK-ES (i)

FR-UK (e)

RO-IT (i)

DE-PL (e)

RO-ES (i)

PL-DE (i)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

i= according to country of immigration; e=according to country of emigration
UK: Immigration 200–42007=2004–2006
Data source: Eurostat

Fig. 3.2 Top-ten intra-European migration flows, 2000–2011 (absolute numbers)

44 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

UK-PL (e)

DE-RO (e)

PL-UK (i)

UK-FR (e)

RO-DE (i)

FR-UK (e)

RO-ES (i)

RO-IT (i)

PL-DE (i)

DE-PL (e)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

i= according to country of immigration; e=according to country of emigration
DE: Immigration and emigration 2008–2011=2008
FR: Immigration and emigration 2008–2011=2008
UK: Immigration and emigration 2008–2011=depending on varying availability of data
Data source: Eurostat

Fig. 3.2 (continued)

and Germany was most prevalent, and consists of movements from as well as to
Poland. The prevalence of Polish-German migration might be explained by the fact
that such migration has been regulated since 1990, when the German and Polish
governments signed a bilateral agreement allowing Polish citizens to engage in
legal seasonal employment for 3 months in specific sectors of the German economy
(Dietz and Kaczmarczyk 2008). This led to a sharp increase in the inflow of Polish
seasonal workers in Germany, from approximately 78,600 in 1992 to 280,000 in
2002 (ibid.). From 2004 to 2007, after Poland’s EU accession, we observe a similar
increase in population movements from Poland to the UK. This can be attributed to
the fact that—unlike other EU member states—Ireland, Sweden, and the UK did not
restrict migration from the new member states. Of these three destinations, Ireland
and the UK were the most popular, in part due to favourable labour market condi-
tions (Castles et al. 2014). In more recent years, however, many Polish migrants
have left the UK, indicating increasing return migration, perhaps related to the eco-
nomic crisis, as the Polish economy has kept growing (Castles et al. 2014). Apart
from the migration flows from and towards Poland, similar inflows and outwards
movements from Romania were observed between 2000 and 2011. Whereas
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 45

between 2000 and 2003 some 39,000 Romanians migrated to Italy and Spain, these
numbers increased to about 110,000 in the subsequent years. Furthermore,
Romanian migration to Italy remained relatively stable, in sharp contrast with the
migration flow towards Spain, which dropped sharply between 2008 and 2011. This
can be attributed to the more difficult labour market conditions in Spain, because of
the economic crisis, which has redirected the movement of Romanian migrants
towards other EU countries (OECD 2013).
Besides migration between Eastern Europe and several other EU countries,
migration flows have been considerable between the UK, France, and Spain. These
movements likely include retirement migration from Northern to Southern Europe,
but also point to increased labour mobility between these countries, especially con-
sidering the flows towards the UK, as will be further discussed later.
Finally, in recent years, the global economic crisis seems to have impacted pat-
terns of intra-EU migration. Data from the OECD (2013) show, for example, an
increase in emigration from countries heavily affected by the crisis (Table 3.5). Cases
in point are Greece and Spain where unemployment rose to unprecedented lev-
els—27.3 % in Greece and 26.1 % in Spain in 2013, with youth unemployment rates
of, respectively, 58.3 and 55.5 % that same year (Eurostat 2014b). Countries that
eased their way into economic recovery, such as Iceland and Ireland, have already
registered declines in the numbers of individuals leaving these countries (OECD
2013). Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK appear to be popular desti-
nation countries, as intra-European migration flows towards these countries almost
doubled in the 5 years prior to 2012. The crisis, however, also led to migration to

Table 3.5 Migration from specific European countries to main European and other OECD
destination countries, 2007–2011
Index Number (thousands)
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2011
Country of origin
Greece 100 106 102 143 236 39
Iceland 100 111 163 165 135 4
Ireland 100 104 174 210 181 21
Italy 100 116 111 132 142 85
Portugal 100 120 98 103 125 55
Spain 100 114 123 173 224 72
Country of destination
Germany 100 105 116 133 188 78
United Kingdom 100 120 113 174 195 88
Switzerland 100 116 96 102 121 33
Belgium 100 142 146 169 193 15
Netherlands 100 138 144 157 184 12
All other OECD countries 100 109 116 124 129 50
Total 100 115 114 140 165 275
Source: OECD (2013, 23)
46 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

UK
SK
SE
RO
PL
NO
NL
LV
LT
IT
FI
ES
DK
DE
AT
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
emigration immigration

PL: immigration 2008–2011 = 2008 and 2010; emigration 2008–2011 = 2008;

RO: emigration 2008–2011 = 2008
(Source: Eurostat, own calculations by NIDI)

Fig. 3.3 Share of intra-European migrants in total emigration and immigration for selected
European countries, 2008–2011 (%)

non-European countries, such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Turkey, the

USA, and in the case of Portugal, to former colonies in Africa (Castles et al. 2014).
It is important to keep in mind that most of the previous analyses are based on
absolute numbers, whereby EU member states with larger populations are logically
more visible. We now consider the relative importance of migration flows as a share
of countries’ total immigration and emigration figures. Figure 3.3 shows the relative
share of EU migration for selected EU countries.
Intra-EU migration forms a substantial share of movements to and from the
majority of the countries in Fig. 3.3. Based on these numbers, we can discern sev-
eral groups. The first group consists of countries where intra-EU immigration and
emigration comprises the largest share of migration movements. It includes Austria,
Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, and Denmark.
The attraction of these countries is explained by their well-developed economies.
Particularly significant within this group are Polish and Lithuanian migrants mov-
ing on to other European destinations. The second group is made up of countries
where more than half of emigration moves are directed towards other European
countries, and immigration is mostly non-European. This group is comprised of
Finland, Italy, Latvia, and Romania. Their geographical location at the borders of
Europe might explain this pattern, as these countries receive immigrants from
neighbouring (non-European) countries and function as transit countries.
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 47

Furthermore, these countries might be less attractive to migrants from other EU

countries because of their limited economic opportunities and relatively low wages
(except for Finland). The third group consists of countries where both emigration
and immigration from and to non-European countries is still of considerable impor-
tance. This group includes Spain, Sweden, and the UK. For Sweden, the most popu-
lar destinations for migrants are (besides the Nordic neighbours) English-speaking
countries such as the UK and the USA (Mannheimer 2012). In terms of the arriving
population, humanitarian refuge and family reunification are the main channels of
immigration in Sweden, which explains the large share of non-European migrants
(Fredlund-Blomst 2014). Spain’s and the UK’s migration balances might reflect
continuing migration from former colonies and historical links with various world
regions which include, for example, language similarities. The UK attracts a consid-
erable number of migrants from ex-colonies such as India and Pakistan (Office for
National Statistics 2011). Furthermore, the principal non-European destinations for
UK migrants are English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, New
Zealand, and the USA (Murray et al. 2012). For Spain, non-European migrants
mainly originate from Morocco and Latin American countries, and Spanish migrants
emigrate to Latin American countries such as Argentina and Venezuela (INE 2014).

Demographic Characteristics of Intra-EU Movers

It has been suggested that free movement within the EU is particularly availed of by
the highly educated (Favell 2008). We therefore investigate the demographic char-
acteristics of those who move within Europe, focusing on selected cases and the
period 2008–2011. Contrasting these cases, for which we have detailed information,
suggests the diversity of migration flows and motives within Europe. Obviously this
analysis does not do justice to more recent moves from Southern Europe to North-
Western Europe, but data to make similar analyses are not yet at hand.
We start with characteristics of those who move. Figure 3.4 shows population
pyramids for Polish migrants heading to Germany and vice versa. As we demon-
strated previously (see Fig. 3.2), Polish-German migration is the most prominent
intra-European migration flow in absolute numbers. The population pyramids are
indicative of the trend in the preceding years. Mobility between both countries is
clearly dominated by men, particularly those between 20 and 50 years of age. This
strongly male-dominated movement of Polish workers towards Germany appears
temporary, as a similar population moves back again (compare Fig. 3.4a and b).
When we compare Polish migration to Germany with Polish migration to the
Netherlands, we find a different panorama (Fig. 3.5). Polish migrants in the
Netherlands are significantly younger, the majority being between 20 and 35 years
of age. Moreover, there is a more equal gender balance. The coincidence of these
migration flows with other life transitions, such as having children and forming a
union, is crucial to gain insight into the way intra-European mobility develops over
the life course.
48 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

Recent research on Polish migrants based on Dutch population registers shows

that having children as well as the choice of partner are important determinants of
permanent settlement (Kleinepier et al. 2015). Similar findings have been reported
on intra-EU migrant groups in other destinations such as Belgium and the UK (see,
e.g., Levrau et al. 2014; Ryan and Mulholland 2013). Where generally circular and
return migration of intra-EU movers is high, this seems especially so for those who
are young, single, and do not have children (see, e.g., Bijwaard 2010; Braun and
Arsene 2009; Kleinepier et al. 2015; Nekby 2006).
The relationship between life course and migration becomes more apparent when
we compare migrants from Romania and those from the UK residing in Spain (Fig.
3.6). Romanian migration to Spain is clearly dominated by young people, with an
overrepresentation of the 20–24 year category. Most of these men and women arrived
in Spain for work or study. The population pyramid of British residents in Spain has
a totally different structure. Some of the British migrants are 30–40 years old, and
many are in the older age groups, from 55 years and older. Thus, British migrants in
Spain seem to be free movers coming to work in Spain alongside retirement migrants.

a
85+
80-84
75-79
70-74
65-69
60-64
55-59
50-54
45-49
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
5-9
0-4
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
men women

Data source: Eurostat; calculations by NIDI

Fig. 3.4 Population pyramid of migrants from Poland to Germany (a) and Germany to Poland (b),
2008 (%)
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 49

b
85+
80-84
75-79
70-74
65-69
60-64
55-59
50-54
45-49
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
5-9
0-4
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
men women

Data source: Eurostat; calculations by NIDI

Fig. 3.4 (continued)

In sum, patterns of intra-EU migration are becoming increasingly diverse.

European citizens enjoy the right of freedom of movement, and might decide to
temporarily or permanently settle in another European country for a variety of rea-
sons, including family formation, retirement, study, and work. Finally it is crucial to
realize that categorization of migrants into certain migration motives is rather dif-
ficult as very often multiple different reasons overlap (see, e.g., Gilmartin and
Migge 2015; Santacreu et al. 2009; Verwiebe 2014).

Conclusions

In this chapter we addressed the first key actor of the binomials presented in Chap.
1 of this volume, namely migrants themselves. We first of all presented a historical
overview of trends in international migration to and within Europe since the 1950s.
Furthermore, we examined the demographic characteristics of these migration flows
50 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

85+
80-84
75-79
70-74
65-69
60-64
55-59
50-54
45-49
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
5-9
0-4
-14 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
men women

NB. NL 2009: break in series due to new regulation

Data source: Eurostat; calculations by NIDI

Fig. 3.5 Population pyramid of Polish migrants to the Netherlands, 2009 (%)

as well as the characteristics of residing migrants across Europe using recent data.
We looked at both immigration and emigration in the European context to do suffi-
cient justice to the dynamic nature of migration. Yet, our findings provide only a
general overview, as the complexity of migration to and from Europe extends well
beyond the scope of a single chapter. Three historical periods were distinguished. It
is important to bear these different periods in mind when studying current migration
flows in Europe. They help to frame but also for analysing the (demographic) behav-
iour of migrant populations. The distinguished periods may help us to structure and
understand the socio-demographic situations which migrants face today. In addi-
tion, this distinction into different periods enables us to appreciate the current and
ongoing political and public debates on migration in Europe.
The first period was characterized by labour migration and a favourable stance
towards migration, covering the years from the beginning of the bilateral guest
worker agreements until the oil crisis. European governments first recruited guest
workers in Southern Europe, but quickly expanded towards countries at Europe’s
borders. Apart from labour migration, a significant postcolonial migration flow char-
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 51

acterized this period. Due to struggles for independence in former colonies, many
European countries received return migrants as well as migrants fleeing hostile con-
flict environments. The Cold War limited East-West mobility during this period.
The second period extended from the oil crisis in the early 1970s to the fall of the
Iron Curtain in the late 1980s. It was characterized by a cessation of guest worker
migration and stringent entry restrictions for new migrants. Nevertheless, migration
flows were transformed rather than halted. Whereas previously labour migration
had been the main migration channel, family reunification (and family formation)
now took over the primary role, and asylum applications were also on the rise.
European governments became aware that migrant populations were likely to
remain on their territory, and they slowly began to develop integration policies. This
continues to be an important issue in the discourse today.
The third period dates from the 1990s to the present day. During this time, we find
substantial diversification in terms of countries of origin, destinations, flows, migra-
tion motives, and structure of migrant populations. One of the most important ele-
ments in this period has been the removal of barriers to intra-European mobility,
while migration into the EU has become more restricted. As such, intra-EU mobility

a
85+
80-84
75-79
70-74
65-69
60-64
55-59
50-54
45-49
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
5-9
0-4
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
men women
Data source: Eurostat; calculations by NIDI

Fig. 3.6 Population pyramid of Romanian (a) and British (b) migrants in Spain, 2008–2011 (%)
52 C. Van Mol and H. de Valk

b
85+
80-84
75-79
70-74
65-69
60-64
55-59
50-54
45-49
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
5-9
0-4
-12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
men women

Data source: Eurostat; calculations by NIDI

Fig. 3.6 (continued)

and migration into the EU have become embedded in different and often opposing
discourses. The end of this third period might be the economic crisis, which so far
seems to have affected mainly intra-European mobility patterns. Peripheral countries
have been hit particularly hard by the crisis, and an increasing tendency towards
emigration can be observed from countries such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal,
and Spain. Immigration of non-EU migrants, however, seems less affected. This is
perhaps because many migrants from outside Europe have found other routes of
arrival, including irregular entrance and stay. Moreover, European countries are inter-
ested in highly skilled migrants in the context of a global competition for talent.
As a result, it seems that comparable to the “migration stop” after the oil crisis of
the 1970s or during the Cold War, migration towards Europe will be transformed
rather than come to a complete halt in the coming years. Mobility within Europe, in
this regard, cannot be seen as separate from migration from outside the EU. Studying
migration systems rather than focusing exclusively on one aspect of mobility is thus
called for. At the same time, our analyses in this chapter also suggest an increasing
dichotomy between migrants who are in a favourable situation with easy access and
rights in Europe (e.g., EU free movers and highly skilled migrants) and those in less
3 Migration and Immigrants in Europe: A Historical and Demographic Perspective 53

favourable situations (mainly those arriving from outside Europe for other reasons).
Development of this dichotomy has important consequences for the lives of
individual migrants and for social cohesion. European societies must demonstrate
awareness of this with policies crafted to acknowledge the diverse nature and
dynamic character of migration that we have shown in this chapter.

Acknowledgments This research was part of and supported by the European Research Council
Starting Grant project (no. 263829) “Families of Migrant Origin: A Life Course Perspective”.

Open Access This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/) which permits any
noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s)
and source are credited.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the work’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if such material is not included
in the work’s Creative Commons license and the respective action is not permitted by statutory
regulation, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to duplicate, adapt or
reproduce the material.

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Chapter 4
National Immigration and Integration Policies
in Europe Since 1973

Jeroen Doomernik and María Bruquetas-Callejo

Introduction

Migration of workers and refugees has long been an integral part of the European
continent’s history. Nonetheless, Europe’s appreciation of migration as a serious
societal and governmental concern is relatively recent. Among the countries with a
colonial history, migration became an issue at the time of the independence of these
Asian, African, and South American nations. North-Western European countries
furthermore witnessed sizeable labour migration from Southern Europe, Turkey,
and Northern Africa. This occurred from the 1950s into the 1970s, though it was
long considered merely an issue of labour supply and demand, and not one posing
social or other challenges. Only after the economic recession of the mid-1970s did
migration, or rather the restriction thereof, become a topic of debate. Integration of
these migrant workers and their children is an issue that took longer to arrive on the
political agenda. In some countries this happened from the late 1970s; in others it
came about only decades later.
From the 1990s onwards, the European countries bordering the Mediterranean,
which had primarily been suppliers of labour for the growing economies of North-
Western Europe, themselves became attractive destinations for migrants.
Improvements in their economies and living conditions opened the way for the
arrival of considerable numbers of workers from Central Europe, Northern Africa,
and Latin America. A precondition for membership of the (then) European
Economic Community was enactment of stringent migration controls; hence inte-
gration issues long took a secondary place.
The Communist Eastern Bloc had been cordoned off from the rest of the world
until 1989 and had thus seen very little migration since the end of the Second World

J. Doomernik • M. Bruquetas-Callejo (*)

University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 57

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_4
58 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

War. The main exceptions consisted of “guest workers” from socialist developing
countries. These workers resided in isolation from the native populations.
Vietnamese migrants remained and these days are a clear presence in the eastern
parts of Germany and the Czech Republic. During the 2000s labour migration
developed from farther east, such as the Ukraine, to Central Europe, while the
nationals of these new destination countries themselves benefited in varying num-
bers from the freedom to go and work elsewhere in the European Union (EU).
From the early 1990s, refugees and asylum seekers became an issue of great
urgency in North-Western Europe. Many states in this region felt overburdened and
took steps to restrict asylum seekers’ access to their territories and to limit asylum
seekers’ eligibility, thus shifting the burden to other member states. Since then,
political consensus has emerged within Europe on the need for a joint approach
towards asylum seekers and refugees, but so far national interests have persisted,
and European solidarity on this issue has remained incomplete. More successful has
been the development of EU-wide policies on migration for the purpose of family
reunion and on the rights of long-term resident third-country nationals. EU law in
the field of general integration policies is not on the political agenda but the Union
has made efforts to stimulate social cohesion and integration of immigrants and
minority groups by means of “soft” law.
In short, European countries’ experiences with immigration have been diverse
and related to geographical location, economic context, political history, and also to
notions of nationhood, national belonging, and organization of government. Beyond
these, European political integration has created an additional level of policy devel-
opment, supplementing and sometimes challenging national policymaking either by
subsidizing local initiatives to foster the integration of immigrants which would
otherwise remain unfunded (e.g., by national governments) or by limiting objec-
tives that are at odds with EU law (e.g., restricting nations’ power to limit the rights
of third-country nationals). These issues are explored further in the next two sec-
tions. The first addresses Europe’s four main types of migratory experiences. The
second discusses the integration policies applied in the context of these experiences.
The chapter seeks to clarify how the concept of integration is used in policy formu-
lation and policy practice, in line with the second question guiding this book: What
are the main factors driving the kinds of relations observed between local govern-
ments and immigrant organizations?

Immigration Experiences and National Policy Responses

Postcolonial, Labour, and Asylum Migrants

in North-Western Europe

Among the first immigrants that European countries witnessed in modern times
were members of the colonial middle classes who came to the “motherland” to work
or to study. Their numbers grew considerably when the colonies gained
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 59

independence. These members of the middle classes felt uneasy under their postco-
lonial governments or expected a more secure future upon resettling in Europe.
Although at some point these European countries of destination imposed restric-
tions on such resettlement, it was generally understood that these migrants belonged
to the nation and that the nation had a moral obligation towards them. Even though
migrants still arrive from these countries as family migrants today, postcolonial
migration was predominantly from the 1950s to the late 1970s.
In the 1960s, employers in countries including Belgium, France, Germany,
Sweden, and the Netherlands recruited labour from abroad. Unskilled and semi-
skilled workers were brought in for the service industry, construction, and manufac-
turing to meet the growing demands of the booming economies. At the same time,
such jobs lost their attraction to native workers, whose educational levels were on
the rise. The intention was to hire such workers on a temporary basis. With the
exception of France, governments had no ambition to develop settlement policies
(Martin and Miller 1980, 316). The term “guest worker” was used to underline this
stance. Once demand for guest workers ebbed as a result of the recession following
the 1973 oil crisis, facts and conceptions took diverging paths. Further recruitment
was halted—in Germany by law—and the guest workers’ return home seemed a
logical consequence of the economic downturn. Yet a large share remained. Despite
the recession, demand for their work remained sizeable (ibid., 320; Castles 1986,
765). Moreover, these workers themselves preferred to stay, as their countries of
origin likewise were going through hard times. For their part, “host” governments
were unable or unwilling to force their erstwhile guests to go home. Welfare arrange-
ments and entitlements were an additional disincentive for return migration. As a
consequence, many guest workers became immigrants. Because this gave cause for
spouses and children to join them, the end of the guest worker era actually meant the
beginning of substantially larger migration flows. As a rule, governments did not
applaud this ongoing migration of family members, but their ability to curb arrivals
was restricted by humanitarian, economic, and legal obligations.
The example of the Netherlands illustrates this. Some 74,000 Moroccan and
Turkish workers lived in this country in 1973, but ethnic communities ten times this
size arose over the next 40 years (Doomernik 2011, 73). In Germany the rise was
less steep. While in 1973 the country had 910,000 Turkish inhabitants, in 2012
some 3 million German residents had a Turkish background.1
Over time, some governments acknowledged that continuing migration produced
ongoing challenges in terms of integrating the newcomers into mainstream society.
In no small part, this was a result of the nature of the recruitment policies, as they
had been biased towards poorly educated migrants (Castles 1986, 773). The bias
towards those with little formal education also put migrants’ children in a disadvan-
taged position in education and, subsequently, the labour market (Crul and
Doomernik 2003). This situation, in conjunction with an increased politicization of
migration, brought about a growing interweaving of migration controls and integra-
tion requirements in countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands (from the late

1
Data from Lederer (1997, 47) and Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (2012, 138).
60 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

1990s on). Permanent residence was made conditional on the acquisition of language
proficiency and knowledge of the host country’s law and society. Even though this
touches all non-EU citizens, these measures were designed to target immigrants
from former guest worker countries of origin. In general it can be observed that
“immigration”, if not directly serving the interests of the receiving states, had taken
on a negative connotation in public discourse.
During the 1990s, migration from the former guest workers’ countries became
overshadowed—in numbers and in popular perceptions—by the arrival of large
numbers of asylum seekers and refugees. In two senses this arrival resulted from the
end of the Cold War. First, restrictions were removed on mobility from Eastern
Europe to the rest of the world. Second, the end of the Cold War indirectly caused
the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The former led to massive
displacement and refugee movements. Many Bosnians ended up seeking security in
Western Europe, especially in Germany, where they were given temporary protec-
tion. By 2005 the largest Bosnian populations in Western Europe were found in
Austria, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands (Valenta and Ramet
2011, 4). Asylum migration from the fringes of the Soviet Union, especially the
Caucasus, also became significant, as did flows from Romania, Turkey, Iraq,
Afghanistan, and from African states tormented by civil war and lawlessness
(Castles et al. 2014, 228). These asylum seekers did not end up more or less ran-
domly distributed among European states. They sought refuge predominantly in
North-Western Europe, and within this region first and foremost in Germany.
Already in 1992 the German parliament saw itself forced to alter the constitution in
order to severely curtail access for asylum claimants. The effect was a drop in over-
all numbers, yet it also created considerable spill-over of asylum requests into
neighbouring states (Grutters 2003, 165). This set in motion a dynamic by which
countries sought to avoid being more attractive than others to asylum seekers, while
also creating impetus for the integrated European approach that became part of the
1997 Amsterdam Treaty. Joint policies were to take effect from May 2004 at the
latest.
Meanwhile two further developments took on prominence. Firstly, among poli-
cymakers a new consensus gradually emerged about the demographic and economic
contributions that selective labour migration might bring. In 2000, the German
chancellor proposed seeking to attract information technology (IT) specialists by
means of a “green card” (Doomernik et al. 2009). The scheme was unsuccessful, but
the change in rhetoric did have impact. The German government established an
expert committee to rethink the hitherto dogmatic position against significant labour
immigration. In other countries, such as the UK, France, and the Netherlands, soon
thereafter similar schemes were devised, all geared towards attracting skilled for-
eign workers (ibid.). Some measured skill levels using the proxy of a high previous
income (as did the UK); others applied human capital endowment measures (e.g., a
university degree was used by France and the Netherlands). At the European level,
too, this ambition found support and resulted in the joint Blue Card programme.
The second key development was the increasing dominance of irregular migra-
tion as a public issue. Here, North-Western Europe faced a particular challenge.
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 61

These countries had long been characterized by inclusive welfare systems that were
also open to non-nationals, alongside highly regulated labour markets in which
informal labour was outlawed. This implied relative closure to immigrants, whose
contribution to the economy could not be guaranteed a priori. Restrictions, however,
led to situations in which an alien, for instance, upon a failed asylum request, ended
up without any state support, which is diametrically opposed to the essence of the
welfare state. In order to avoid such paradoxical and politically troublesome situa-
tions, these states tended to devise measures against unsolicited arrivals. At the
same time, lack of legal opportunities for unskilled immigrant workers encouraged
illegal migration and unwarranted asylum requests. States in North-Western Europe
tended to respond with increased detention of aliens and forced return measures
(Doomernik and Jandl 2008).

From Emigration to Immigration in the Southern European

Countries

Once North-Western European recruitment policies were discontinued in 1973–

1974 and the period of mass emigration from Southern Europe came to an end,
Mediterranean countries began their gradual transformation to countries of immi-
gration. Changes were spurred by unprecedented economic growth and political
stability brought about by the end of the dictatorships in Portugal, Greece, and
Spain, as well as by the accession of these countries to the European Economic
Community during the 1980s. Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece presented from the
beginning particular patterns of migration and migration regulation that distin-
guished them from North-Western Europe (Baldwin-Edwards 1997; King et al.
1997; Arango and Finotelli 2009). The “Mediterranean model of immigration”
(King et al. 1997) is characterized by a predominance of labour and family migra-
tion, a scarcity of asylum seekers, illegality as an endemic feature, and the combina-
tion of restrictive admission and citizenship policies with frequent amnesties.
Migration to Southern Europe is closely related to its colonial past, linked to former
African and Latin American colonies, and to the opening up of Central and Eastern
Europe. Similarities in migration trends and policies among these countries must
thus be seen in light of their common historical developments and analogous socio-
economic conditions.
The start of immigration flows caught Southern European countries unprepared,
lacking immigration experience and an adequate legal framework. Southern
European countries reacted by developing policies to fence off immigration and
established ius sanguinis as the principle defining who belonged to the nation. Spain
passed its first foreigners law in 1985, pushed by the obligations acquired with its
accession to the European Economic Community. The end of the Cold War and the
gradual incorporation of Central and Eastern Europe into the EU migration system
brought about a sharp increase of migration from Albania and the former Soviet
Union to Italy and above all to Greece in the first half of the 1990s. In that period,
62 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

policymakers across Europe shared a fear of an imminent “invasion” of Central and

Eastern European migrants, which stimulated the introduction of stricter control
and admission measures. It was in this spirit that Greece and Italy developed their
first alien laws, respectively, in 1991 and 1998.
From the mid-1980s through the 1990s, Southern Europe experienced a period
of intense economic growth with substantial labour shortages in low-skilled sectors.
This created a strong demand for migrant labour during a time of restructuring of
the global economy, resulting in a remarkable increase of foreigners’ presence in
Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece. Flows in Spain showed the most spectacular
growth. The percentage of foreign population increased from 2.2 to 12.2 between
2000 and 2010, according to National Institute of Statistics figures. Despite these
large flows, the issue of migration remained relatively depoliticized until recently,
with foreign workers generally perceived as contributors to the national economy
(except in Greece).2
As a result of the strong segmentation of the labour market that was characteris-
tic of these countries, migrants were incorporated in low-status, low-paid jobs that
natives tended to reject. Typically, those sectors with a strong need for low-skilled
labour fell within the large informal economy of Southern European countries, esti-
mated in 2002–2003 as 28.3 % of gross domestic product (GDP) in Greece, 26.2 %
of GDP in Italy, and 22.2 % of GDP in Portugal and Spain (Schneider and Klingmair
2004). Other niches of migrant labour are closely associated with the features of the
Mediterranean welfare regime, particularly the large informal market for domestic
work and care-giving services, which employs primarily migrant women. Gradually,
governments saw the need to regulate labour migration, with Spain being the first to
introduce a scheme based on a labour market test (known as the Regimen General,
as established in the 1985 Foreigners Law), followed by Greece in 1991 with its
invitation scheme. Ultimately, all four countries ended up introducing a system of
annual quotas for labour migrants—representing all skill levels—Italy in 1990,
Spain in 1993, Greece in 2000, and Portugal in 2001. These systems were a
forerunner of the current EU position that recognizes the need to open new legal
ways to enter the EU given the crucial role that immigration plays in the European
economy.3 Implicitly, Southern European countries have bet on immigrants to main-
tain the low-productivity sectors that form the core of their economies (González-
Enriquez and Triandafyllidou 2009).
At a certain point, governments acknowledged that migration recruitment proce-
dures were ineffective, as shown by the large presence of irregular migrants. To
cope with the discrepancy between planned legal inflows and the actual needs of the

2
Data from the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2008 show that while Southern
Europeans are reticent towards the entry of “many” immigrants they generally acknowledge that
immigrants bring about positive consequences for their national economies (Moreno Fuentes and
Bruquetas-Callejo 2011, 162–165).
3
In 2000, EU Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs Antonio Vitorino declared that ‘new
legal ways for immigrants to enter the EU’ were needed because ‘the zero immigration policies of
the past 25 years are not working’ (cit. in Martin et al. 2006, 74–75).
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 63

economy they have applied regularization programmes “ex post” with a certain
degree of periodicity, though governments presented them each time as exceptional
“one time only” measures (Arango and Finotelli 2009, 31). Regularizations have
been applied by governments of different colour, showing a considerable continuity
in the policies of the main political parties in all four countries, despite rhetorical
differences (González-Enriquez and Triandafyllidou 2009; Zincone 2006).
However, by 2005 regularizations had become highly controversial among North-
Western European partners who claimed that immigrants regularized in Southern
Europe tended to move to Northern Europe to benefit from the generous welfare
systems there (Chauvin et al. 2013). Interestingly, research shows rather the oppo-
site effect: regularizations in Italy and Spain have “stabilized” a large part of the
immigrant population (Carafagna 2002; Blangiardo 2004; Arango and Finotelli
2009; Cachón 2007).4 In any case, from the mid-2000s, increased European integra-
tion has put more pressure on improving migration controls, and the European
Council has agreed to limit regularizations to individual and ad hoc measures.
In sum, migration policies in the Southern EU member states have primarily set
out to fight illegal migration. Massive migration flows to the Mediterranean coun-
tries occurred in a period combining restrictive policies and sizeable labour demand,
and this partly explains why illegal migration is so predominant.5 The four Southern
European countries followed a similar path of policymaking: starting with the lack
of an adequate legal framework for the influx of migrants, soon after adopting strict
control measures, then establishing measures to manage migrant labour, and subse-
quently resorting to regularizations to “repair” ex post the poorly functioning
recruitment procedures.
Due to the peculiarities of the Mediterranean model of migration, illegal migra-
tion poses other challenges to Southern European countries than to North-Western
European ones. Illegal migration in Southern Europe is mainly a result of visa-
overstaying or losing work permits, not illegally entering the country (Monzini et al.
2006; Arango and Finotelli 2009). Southern European policymakers are thus mainly
concerned with how to handle large concentrations of irregular migrants while at
the same time curtailing the shadow economy and collecting taxes and social secu-
rity contributions. From this perspective, regularization programmes seem to be
win-win opportunities that transform irregular migrants into regular ones, making
them taxpayers and social-security contributors. However, it leaves unresolved the
question of how to prevent regular migrants from falling into irregularity when they
have to renew their temporary residence permits and cannot prove they hold a for-
mal job. It also fails to tackle the informal economy, which created and reproduces
the South European irregular migration system.

4
In fact, an Italian study observed that Eastern European citizens such as Moldavians and
Ukrainians who lived in Italy had obtained their visas in Germany (Colombo and Sciortino 2004).
5
Arango (2005) summarizes the factors involved in the “equation of irregularity” as intensive
flows, restrictive regulations, attractiveness of the informal economy, geographical proximity,
weakness of controls, and effectiveness of smuggling activities.
64 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

Central and Eastern Europe

During the decades in which Eastern and Central Europe were under Communist
rule migration was a rare phenomenon. Insofar as it occurred, it concerned people
leaving for Western countries. There were some highly publicized cases of dissi-
dents who managed to flee, and others who were forced into exile, but quantitatively
much more important were the ethnic Germans who, by the thousands and year
after year, left Poland and Romania to resettle in the German Federal Republic.
Between 1950 and 1989 this led to the resettlement of, respectively, some 240,000
persons.6 After the end of the Cold War the former states of the Eastern Bloc were
confronted with three challenges. The first was emigration to Western and Southern
Europe. Indeed, migration triggered the fall of the Iron Curtain. Almost as soon as
the Hungarian government opened its borders to Austria in the summer of 1989
large numbers of East Germans used this opportunity to travel to West Germany.
Significant also was that the Hungarian government had signed the Geneva Refugee
Convention thus signalling that it would not return fleeing foreigners to their coun-
tries of origin (because of the Convention’s prohibition against refoulement). The
desire to move West did not diminish once all restrictions on departure had been
lifted. The nature of the movements did change however. Fewer people settled
abroad, and forms of brief mobility and temporary labour migration took on greater
importance (Favell 2008). Until the 2004 accession of 10 new member states to the
EU, much of this mobility was irregular. Afterwards, it became regular as part of the
EU’s freedom of movement. Generally speaking, emigration from the new member
states poses no policy challenges in countries of origin. The main exceptions are
found in the Baltics. Upon independence in 1991, nearly half of Latvia’s population
was of Russian origin. This fact made development of nationality policies unavoid-
able. These, in effect, transformed sizeable segments of the population into foreign-
ers, many of whom felt compelled to “return” to Russia or go elsewhere (e.g., Jews
could opt for a future in Israel or Germany) (Doomernik 1997). Another conse-
quence of ethnic state-building in the Baltics was considerable governmental con-
cern about emigration of co-ethnics and ensuing attempts to formulate effective and
inclusive diaspora policies that would ideally lead to their return once the nation’s
economy had recovered from its crisis (Lace 2013). In Poland, too, maintaining the
diaspora’s connection with the fatherland was viewed as a strategic political objec-
tive, as was the promotion of employment in the wider EU (Kicinger and Koryś
2011, 367).
Secondly, immigration, be it of refugees or workers, until today has tended to be
of minor political concern. In Poland, for instance, refugee numbers have been rela-
tively small (mainly people fleeing Chechnya) whereas most other migrants arrive
for work (OECD 2013, 284). Moreover, with the exception of Hungary and the
Czech and Slovak Republics net migration is negative, in Latvia and Lithuania even
dramatically so (ibid., 271, 273). Early migration policies were, where needed,

6
Own calculations based on Worbs et al. (2013, Table 2.2).
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 65

fashioned on an ad hoc basis. Such policy responses were required towards the pres-
ence of de facto guest workers from (predominantly) Vietnam who had arrived dur-
ing the Communist era. These were typically granted leave to remain. There was
also regional migration to regulate from the Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the
Russian Federation (ibid.), but few attempts at restriction were made. This changed
once accession to the EU came into view, as Kicinger and Koryś (2011) show for the
Polish case. Regarding third-country nationals, directives such as those on family
reunification, long-term residents, and refugees had to be turned into national law.
Existing migration patterns (often of a temporary nature) from eastern neighbours
were not easily reconciled with the EU logic of border management, especially the
Schengen Agreement. But finally border commuting could be exempted from a
strict implementation of the Schengen regime (ibid.). For labour migrants from
eastern neighbouring states, simplified rules were introduced in 2006 (exempting
them from labour market testing) (OECD 2013, 284). Most of these workers were
employed in construction and agriculture (ibid.).
According to Čanĕk and Čižinsky (2011), reporting on the Czech experience,
this happened somewhat naively and in the expectation that adopting the EU acquis
would automatically mean the introduction of a comprehensive migration regime.
However, the fact that this was not the case has not attracted much political atten-
tion. Since migration issues are not a salient political priority, and political parties
lack distinctive positions and clear views about migration, migration policymaking
has remained in the hands of specialized civil servants.
Among the Central European countries, first and foremost the Czech Republic
became an attractive destination for economic migration from Russia, Ukraine, and
Slovakia (Drbohlav 2012, 185). In the Czech case, increasing demand for migrant
labour has been documented, especially in booming areas like Prague and Mladá
Bolesvav, where some authors report that the social welfare system offers insuffi-
cient motivation for unemployed Czechs to seek work (Jíchová 2005 in Čanĕk and
Čižinsky 2011). Like most countries in the region, the Czech government has
aspired to attract highly skilled migrant workers by means of a special scheme
(Doomernik et al. 2009). Success, however, seems to have been limited (Drbohlav
n.d.). In 2011, 244 migrants made use of the Czech scheme; 80 % of these were
Ukrainian nationals (OECD 2013, 244).

Towards a European Approach to Asylum Seekers, Refugees,

and Labour Migrants

With the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, migration and asylum were formally defined as
a common policy concern. As noted earlier, at the time, asylum migration stood
high on the political agenda of the EU’s North-Western member states. A first step
towards a common approach was to limit eligibility for protection to the first safe
country the asylum seeker set foot in. This principle became codified in the Dublin
Convention (and was later incorporated into the EU Treaty). In effect, this put the
66 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

obligation to receive asylum seekers on the member states at the EU’s periphery.
Alternative mechanisms by which to achieve more even burden-sharing have yet to
be developed. Presently, some member states are unable (notably Greece) or unwill-
ing (notably Italy) to abide by the agreements based on “Dublin”. At the same time,
member states farther north consider the existing arrangements as satisfactory.
Political solidarity between member states is thus not easily achieved. Instead mod-
est compensatory measures have been introduced to reward states for their efforts in
accommodating refugees; the European Refugee Fund offers subsidies for their
integration.
By 1997 political ambitions had progressed towards truly common policies in
the field of refugee protection, asylum, and migration. The Amsterdam Treaty con-
cluded that year (and coming into force in 1999) turned these issues into communi-
tarian ones, and the Commission was asked to propose a comprehensive approach.
By 2004 this had led in the field of asylum to directives on minimum norms regard-
ing asylum-seeker reception and asylum procedures and on common definitions of
who qualified as a refugee (which were recast in 2011). In many instances this
simply permitted member states to continue existing practices. The Common
European Asylum System (CEAS), as it is commonly referred to, gained new
momentum from the publication in 2008 of the European Commission’s Policy Plan
on Asylum. This sought to build on the European political consensus regarding the
need for more practical collaboration, further harmonization, and increased solidar-
ity among member states. Yet, collaboration has since become most visible in
increased border controls, the deployment of Frontex, and in 2011 the establishment
of the European Asylum Support Office in Malta. Prospects for a truly joint asylum
system (i.e., having joint processing facilities and redistributive measures) remain
beyond the present horizon (Thielemann and Armstrong 2012).
Arguably, a common European asylum system would be born out of managerial
and political necessity. However, as already noted, when the Amsterdam Treaty was
drafted, the political ambition was to go much farther and devise a comprehensive
European migration regime. To this end, the European Commission produced an
ambitious proposal in 2001 (COMM 757/2001) going in the direction of managed
and forward-looking labour immigration schemes to fulfil current and future
demand and to curb irregular migration, human smuggling, and trafficking. It found
support in Southern Europe but much less up north. Indeed, in subsequent steps, the
willingness among member states to surrender their sovereignty in the admission of
foreign workers evaporated (if it ever had truly existed).
Nevertheless, some consequential directives are now part of EU law. A 2003 direc-
tive grants long-term residents the same freedom of movement as is enjoyed by EU
nationals (after five years of legal residence in one member state) (Council Directive
2003/109/EC). Also concluded in 2003 is a directive on family reunification (Council
Directive 2003/86/EC) which determines the conditions under which third-country
nationals can bring in their family members. In the subsequent years, this led to prac-
tices that were more liberal than some of the member states had intended. Coming
into force more recently was the Blue Card Directive (Council Directive 2009/50/
EC), detailing common rules for the admission of highly skilled workers. It aims to
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 67

simplify and standardize admission requirements for skilled workers from outside the
EU and to ease their mobility between member states. The idea here is to increase the
EU’s competitive edge in the global competition for “brains”. Hence, it hardly chal-
lenges member states’ sovereignty (Doomernik et al. 2009).

Integration Regimes: Who Is to Integrate

into What and by Which Means

Integration Policies in North-Western Europe

Since postcolonial immigration was generally understood as a collective inheritance

and to comprise members of the nation, most North-Western European countries
did not develop policies for the integration of migrants from the colonies.7
Nevertheless, in countries like the Netherlands, migrants were exposed to fierce
re-education programmes aimed at acculturating them into the mainstream.
Migrants arriving within post-war recruitment schemes were seen as “guest work-
ers” and therefore ideas about integrating them into society hardly surfaced. When
they did, national reactions differed considerably. States varied in their basic concep-
tion of citizenship, which shapes the rules of belonging to the community. In Germany
and other countries where membership to the nation is defined by descent (ius san-
guinis), permanent settlement of non-Germans was politically daunting and, on the
part of the migrant, required many years of patience and almost complete assimila-
tion into society. Countries having a political definition of the nation provided easier
admission of new members to the polity, as long as newcomers adhered to the con-
stitution, laws, and political rules. Among the countries that applied such an approach
to integration, some, including France, required more cultural adaptation, while oth-
ers, such as Sweden, the UK, and the Netherlands, tolerated or even promoted a
higher degree of cultural and ethnic diversity. Newcomers in France were considered
‘individuals who had to disappear into the pre-defined political model by renouncing
their own attributes—cultural, religious or otherwise—in the public sphere’ (Wihtol
de Wenden 2011, 67). In the UK, on the contrary, integration was officially defined
as ‘not a flattening process of uniformity but as cultural diversity coupled with equal
opportunity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’ (Home Secretary Roy Jenkins,
cited in Rex 1995, 248). According to different ways of understanding citizenship
and nationhood, European countries developed integration policies that have been
coined “differential exclusionist”, “assimilationist”, or “pluralist”.8

7
The UK, for instance, in 1965 created the Race Relations Act which outlawed racial
discrimination.
8
Castles and Miller’s (1993) classification of conceptions of citizenship as “republican”, “ethnic”,
or “multicultural” is one of the most frequently cited. Recent criticisms challenge the usefulness of
such national integration models (Thränhardt and Bommes 2010).
68 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

The timing of the development of integration policies has also been influenced
by such conceptions of citizenship. For states in North-Western Europe that relied
on exclusive notions of nationhood, it took a very long time to acknowledge the
permanent character of migration. In Germany, for instance, the presence of non-
German immigrants remained ignored until 2001, when a government-appointed
committee concluded that migration henceforth should be actively promoted. Other
countries in the region recognized relatively early on that what had seemed to be
temporary migration had turned into long-term settlement. They, hence, developed
integration policies and sought to limit discriminatory effects of immigration law by
offering ways towards rapid naturalization. Two countries that had formulated early
responses towards the settlement of non-nationals were the Netherlands and
Sweden. In the Dutch case, from 1980 onward the government pursued an active
integration policy whereby the precise definition of who was targeted by the policy
evolved in sync with overall societal evolution. Elsewhere, realization of the perma-
nent character of migrant settlement did not lead to formal integration policy; rather,
integration was addressed under general welfare policies or shaped by less formal-
ized arrangements and implemented by non-state actors.
Even in states that adopted explicit integration policies, the general institutional
framework shaped the socio-economic integration of immigrants. Particularly, the
welfare regime (and the corresponding economic-industrial configuration and type
of labour market) together with immigration law have proven crucial for the posi-
tion of immigrants. While the residential and legal status of immigrants determines,
directly and indirectly, their access to public welfare and to the labour market as
long as they remain foreigners, the distinct welfare regime in place shapes both the
opportunity of access and the form and extent of benefits (Dorr and Faist 1997;
Morissens and Sainsbury 2005). The systems that provide more extensive coverage
for immigrants are the universal ones that include the whole residential population,
like those in Scandinavian countries and, in some policy areas, in other countries
(such as old-age pensions in the Netherlands and health care in Spain and the UK).
Insurance systems based on contributions during times of regular employment, typi-
cal of conservative-corporatist welfare states like Germany, France, and the Benelux,
tend to exclude some migrant categories from benefits. Among the selective secu-
rity systems typical of liberal welfare states, such as the UK and Ireland, coverage
for immigrants very much depends on the degree of governmental regulation of the
market.
With time, some states that had previously excluded migrants from formal (i.e.,
legal) participation opened up by offering ius soli and relaxed conditions for natu-
ralization, whereas others that were previously relatively open, started to become
less inclusive in legal terms, matched by more assimilationist conceptions of “inte-
gration”. Obtaining permanent residency status has in some cases been made condi-
tional on fulfilling such integration requirements. The Dutch pioneered testing of
language skills before a visa is granted to spouses seeking to join their husband or
wife in the Netherlands. Upon arrival, substantial language proficiency must be
demonstrated. Mandatory integration courses and contractual obligations to acquire
basic language and cultural skills, first developed by Denmark and the Netherlands,
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 69

have become widespread in this part of Europe (e.g., in France, Germany, and
Austria), albeit not always aimed at the same segment of the immigrant population.
In effect, admission and integration have increasingly become intertwined.
In spite of the relevance of the national level, local authorities and local actors
across North-Western Europe have been and still are key in the formulation and
implementation of integration policies. Even in the countries that developed highly
centralized schemes, like the Netherlands and Sweden, the importance of the local
level is undeniable, bringing about a distinctive view on integration oriented by
rather pragmatic goals. This has sometimes led to open discontinuities or opposition
between national and local policies.

Integration Policies in Southern European Countries

In Southern Europe, integration measures followed long after the attempts to regu-
late admissions and migrant labour. Italy launched in 1998 its first migration law
including integration; Spain did so in 2000, followed by Greece and Portugal in
2001. Up to then Southern Europe’s management of migration resembled in many
ways that in Northern Europe during the guest worker period in the 1960s. Despite
the fact that immigration to Southern Europe was neither mediated nor planned by
the receiving states, a labour-oriented approach prevailed in which immigration
control and labour regulation were the main priorities and integration was relegated
to a second place (Bruquetas-Callejo et al. 2011). This explains the economic con-
ception of migration that guides Southern European policies, in contrast to the
humanitarian-oriented commitment that still weighs heavily in North-Western
European policies (Finotelli 2009). In this view, regularizations are legitimized as a
mechanism allowing the legal inclusion of formally unwanted (irregular) immi-
grants, provided that they enhance the utility of immigration for the receiving coun-
try’s economy and society. Above all, those who contribute positively to the
countries’ economies become the Mediterranean answer to the question of who
should be integrated.
Characteristic of Southern European countries is that integration policies have
been elaborated from the bottom up, starting with local and regional initiatives in
the 1990s. Policies diverged from city to city and region to region. Since the turn of
the millennium, we have witnessed in all countries initiatives to produce national
frameworks of integration in an effort to coordinate the policies produced at sub-
national levels. Greece and Portugal have been relatively successful in this regard,
with national plans that are managed in a more centralized way than those in Spain
and Italy. Moreover, EU initiatives and financial instruments (e.g., the European
Social Fund and European Integration Fund) have promoted the application of inte-
gration projects initiated by immigrant organizations, nongovernmental organiza-
tions (NGOs), municipalities, and universities. The outcomes of these EU
programmes for the promotion of the social and economic integration of immi-
grants have been positive though limited (Triandafyllidou 2009).
70 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

Southern European countries have continued to think of themselves as emigration

countries (Zincone 2011, 390), which is reflected in their more open integration poli-
cies. With the exception of Greece, Southern European countries are very inclusive in
legal terms, especially towards migrants with a cultural or ethnic link. Regular immi-
grants in Southern Europe have access to basic rights (e.g., work, welfare services,
health care, and education) on equal footing with natives, while irregular migrants’
access depends on local authorities’ will and the discretionary practices of street-level
bureaucrats (González-Enriquez and Triandafyllidou 2009; Moreno Fuentes and
Bruquetas-Callejo 2011). Spain is a case in point, as since 2000 irregular migrants
registered in the municipal census have been entitled to basic social rights such as
health care, education, and welfare allowances, although with the reform of the health
care law in 2012 (Royal Decree 16/2012) health care rights were restricted to foreign-
ers legally residing in the country and contributing to the social security system.9
As a consequence of their labour-oriented approach to migration, immigrant
integration in Southern European societies takes place mainly through labour mar-
ket insertion. Typical of the Mediterranean welfare regime, Southern European
countries offer coverage for unemployment and old-age pensions proportionate to
labour participation and contributions to the social security system. This contribu-
tive logic, which is also common among the conservative-corporatist systems of
North-Western Europe, usually implies that foreign-born citizens have less cover-
age since they tend to hold temporary jobs. Similarly, their old-age pensions tend to
be less, since most immigrants have contributed to the social security system for
fewer years. Thus, Mediterranean welfare states are characterized by a combination
of contributive and universal schemes. While immigrants are entitled to universal
benefits in areas like health care and social services, the amount of other benefits
(e.g., basic income allowances) is linked to contributions, meaning they tend to be
more meagre than those of the native populations.
This also means that the process of integration is less directly mediated by
explicit policies of integration but rather by immigrants’ agency and interaction
with local network and clientelistic relations that structure the labour market and
interaction with the state in Southern Europe (Triandafyllidou 2009). Immigrants
find their local niches of life and work and take part in local life and networks
regardless of their legal situation. Nevertheless, as we read above, the segmentation
of the labour market determines that migrants are incorporated in the less protected
segments and often in very precarious situations.
Moreover, immigrants are tolerated to reside and work in these countries but are
generally seen as outsiders, not belonging to the nation even after many years of resi-
dence. Restrictive citizenship policies in Southern Europe make naturalization espe-
cially difficult. Third-country nationals in Italy, Greece, Spain, and (until 2006)
Portugal are required to have resided in the country at least ten years in order to apply
for naturalization. Yet, for immigrants who can prove ethnic descent or colonial ties,
naturalization is relatively easy, creating two differentiated roads to integration.

9
Then again, regional governments are in charge of implementing this, which leads to variation. So
far, several regions have publicly declared that they will not implement this reform.
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 71

Southern European societies produce a different answer to the question of who

should be integrated. Contrary to the North-Western European situation, Southern
Europeans are rather tolerant to irregular immigrants (González-Enríquez and
Triandafyllidou 2009). This can be explained by the prevailing labour migration
rational, as well as the roles played by various actors. The Catholic Church in three
of the four countries, for example, has lobbied for soft policies towards irregular
migration (while in Greece, the Orthodox Church has not played an important role).
Trade unions, too, have adopted a cooperative stance towards immigrants. While the
middle classes provide a broad base of social support (partly due to the services that
migrants provide for them), there are negative feelings among low-skilled workers,
since their salaries and labour conditions have been affected by the arrival of
immigrants.

Integration Policies in Central and Eastern Europe

The former Eastern Bloc countries still have relatively small numbers of migrants
from third countries. Foreign-born residents are most prevalent in the Czech Republic
at 3.8 %, whereas in Poland only 1.2 % is foreign-born (Vasileva 2011). For Hungary
the figure is 4.4 %, but includes many ethnic Hungarians who resettled from neigh-
bouring countries. Accordingly, throughout Central Europe little has been done in
the design of national integration policies (Dbrohlav 2012, 196). In fact, the incipi-
ent policy initiatives in this field are largely EU-driven. Central European countries’
accession to the EU pushed them to develop policies in this area, despite their scant
migration figures. This has implications for the policies produced, since launching
integration policies in countries where there are relatively few migrants is an abstract
process, and EU policymaking applies only soft measures.
In Poland, for example, integration policies have so far been limited to asylum
seekers, while other categories of migrants are covered by scattered European-
funded initiatives. Poland’s ratification of the Geneva Convention in 1991 afforded
it international recognition as a democracy; therefore, refugee protection has
become the most important area of integration policies (Kicinger 2009, 91).
Integration policies are being articulated in the Czech Republic too, and updated
yearly, with policy initiatives stressing both the acquisition of rights by foreigners
and immigrants’ acquisition of the Czech language and basic civic knowledge
(Barsová and Barsa 2005). Since 2009, language tests have been introduced as a
requirement to obtain permanent residence status. In addition, the government has
since 2011 established regional integration centres where third-country nationals
and refugees can find practical support. The government explicitly mentions its reli-
ance on European resources (e.g., the European Integration Fund) to fund these
centres and their activities. Writing about Poland, Stefanska (2011) asserts that
without such EU funds, integration measures would be absent.
A number of these states recently reformed their naturalization laws to facilitate
the legal inclusion of migrants. In the Czech Republic, for instance, five years of
72 J. Doomernik and M. Bruquetas-Callejo

legal residence presently suffices to attain Czech citizenship. This is more liberal
than the naturalization laws in Poland and Hungary. In these latter countries, respec-
tively, ten and eight years of residence is the standard requirement, while more
relaxed conditions apply for spouses of nationals and refugees. A reflection of the
growing importance of migration in the Czech Republic is that from 2014 forward,
naturalization will no longer require relinquishing one’s original nationality.
Top-down processes of policymaking such as those promoted by EU funds may
lead to inconsistencies, piecemeal policymaking, and a growing need for develop-
ment of a more comprehensive integration system. In Poland, introduction of a
comprehensive policy is under discussion (Pawlak 2015). In the Czech Republic
responsibilities for integration policymaking are being concentrated in the
Department of Asylum and Migration (Čanĕk and Čižinsky 2011). In Central and
Eastern Europe, overall, development of comprehensive integration policies takes
place against the backdrop of the transformation of the communist regime. As any
process of such deep institutional change, this transition constitutes both an oppor-
tunity for introducing new policymaking and a challenge, because brand new poli-
cies must grow in an institutional framework full of incongruities. Above all, there
is a fundamental inconsistency in the logic of Central European economic and wel-
fare institutions by which ‘neo-liberal economic institutions coexist with outdated,
malfunctioning distributive institutions, which are fundamentally socialist in nature’
(Szelenyi and Wilk 2010, 583 in Pawlak 2015).

Conclusion

Obviously, we do not know what directions migration and integration regimes in

Europe would have taken if these topics were still the sole domain of national gov-
ernments. Perhaps they would have converged anyway as a consequence of other
macro developments. In any event, a first general observation that can be made is
that migration regimes have become similar, and where EU acquis rule, even identi-
cal. These developments have secured the position of third-country nationals and
provided for uniform rules regarding family reunification. In other cases, however,
convergence has not taken place along the lines of equally shared interests or fair
compromise, but rather the concerns of the old EU-15 member states, particularly
the North-Western ones, have set the tone. This has resulted in restrictive measures
instead of burden-sharing in the EU’s joint dealings with asylum seekers and refu-
gees, to the dislike of Southern European members. With the exception of highly
skilled migration, joint labour migration policies have not materialized. Furthermore,
EU accession has forced member states that previously had relaxed (or few) migra-
tion policies to take controls seriously.
Convergence is furthermore in evidence when it comes to integration regimes.
Countries that initially had multicultural policies have gradually developed poli-
cies with an assimilationist slant. There is also evidence of countries going in the
opposite direction: from ethnically justified exclusion to more openness towards
4 National Immigration and Integration Policies in Europe Since 1973 73

ethnic diversity. Those member states for which the immigration experience is
fairly fresh do not tend to have comprehensive approaches towards settlers from
third countries. Integration policies instead tend to be a local matter, often stimu-
lated by EU funding. In effect, where national political agendas are less inclined
towards the support of immigrant integration, these can be bypassed by municipal
governments. In Central and to some extent Southern Europe, integration is not
necessarily on the national political agenda to begin with. Indeed, it finds expres-
sion mainly in networks such as Integrating Cities, Intercultural Cities, CLIP (the
European Network of Cities for Local Integration Policies for Migrants), and
ECCAR (the European Coalition of Cities against Racism), which receive subsi-
dies from a European Commission programme for the integration of third-country
nationals. Because these networks bring together a large number of cities to work
together and share practices, much of the resulting integration dynamic appears to
be local.
This brings us to a third trend (and a final question): not only in new countries of
immigration but also in the older member states, local governance appears to be
rising in importance. As also noted by others (e.g., Barber 2013; Saunders 2010)
migration is predominantly an urban affair, and local governments are keenly aware
of the opportunities and challenges resulting from it. At the same time, at the
national level political responses to migration can be critical, and at times downright
unfriendly. This may prompt local policymakers to look elsewhere for support, for
example, to the EU. Whether this actually undermines the importance of the national
level in dealing with such sensitive issues as national identity and belonging is still
an open question.

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Chapter 5
Who Is an Immigrant and Who
Requires Integration? Categorizing
in European Policies

Liza Mügge and Marleen van der Haar

Introduction

The formulation of immigration and integration policies is indispensably tied to the

naming of immigrants, thereby differentiating between them. Categories form the
backbone of policies, as they formally define (i) who is a wanted and who is an
unwanted immigrant and (ii) who requires integration and who does not. “Immigrants”
are far from homogeneous. They differ in characteristics such as migration motives
(e.g., for work, political asylum, or family reunification), type of homeland (e.g.,
Western versus non-Western), and gender and ethnicity. Consequently, some immi-
grants are considered part of an intractable policy issue (Rein and Schön 1977;
Schön and Rein 1994), whereas others are not. Whether a group is problematized or
targeted as in need of integration depends on the combination of characteristics and
statuses attributed to it. Such characteristics and statuses provide the basis of catego-
ries that define which immigration and integration policies a group is subjected to.
For instance, integration policies tend to frame ethnic minority women, especially
Muslims, as victims, while their male spouses and family members may be regarded
as a threat to the state’s ideals of gender equality since they are presumed to oppress

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the workshop ‘Power, Privilege and Disadvantage:
Intersecting Gender and Diversity Studies in the Politics of (In)equality’ held 11–13 June 2014 in
Maastricht. We thank the organizers of that workshop as well as Sara de Jong, Petra Debusscher,
Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas, and Rinus Penninx for their comments on previous drafts.
L. Mügge
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
M. van der Haar (*)
Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 77

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_5
78 L. Mügge and M. van der Haar

women (Bracke 2011; Roggeband and Verloo 2007). Such a framing leads to differ-
ent policy outcomes for different groups of immigrants. Emancipation is generally
seen as the main vehicle for the integration of Muslim women, while integration of
Muslim men tends to focus on surveillance and control (Razack 2004).
This chapter draws on a literature review to examine the implications of catego-
rization for immigration and integration trajectories. It examines how categories
formalized in laws and regulations construct explicit as well as implicit target
groups. For policy purposes, formal target groups tend to be treated as mutually
exclusive (Yanow 2003). However, policies implicitly differentiate within target
groups as well, for instance, along lines of religion and class (see also Schrover and
Moloney 2013, 255). This chapter is guided by three questions. First, how do poli-
cies construct categorizations? Second, who do policies target explicitly, and who
do they target implicitly? Third, under what conditions do policy categories (e.g.,
the groups that are considered problematic and “in need of integration”) and terms
(e.g., guest workers, allochthones, illegals, and asylum seekers) unintendedly ren-
der stereotypes, prejudices, and potential discrimination? The first section outlines
theoretical perspectives on categories in policymaking. The second section analyses
who is targeted explicitly and who is targeted implicitly by immigration and integra-
tion policies. In particular, it looks at the two main tracks of European citizens and
third-country nationals (TCNs). Although policymaking—and therefore the use of
categories—takes place at multiple levels that sometimes clash (e.g., rejected asy-
lum seekers may be categorized as “unwanted” at the national level, but at the same
time be accommodated at the local level), this chapter concentrates on the literature
addressing the supranational and national levels.

The Study of Categories and Its Relevance for Policymaking

Categories are central organizing structures in all human societies (Hancock 2007,
64). They are key in attributing sameness and difference (Stone 2002, 308), based
on a combination of ‘achieved and ascribed traits’ (Massey 2007, 1). Achieved
characteristics are acquired in the course of living (e.g., being a member of a par-
ticular income class or a university graduate), while ascribed characteristics are set
at birth (e.g., age and sex) (ibid.).
The study of categories is well developed in sociology and public policy. Gender
studies and migration and ethnic studies focus on categories in their critical assess-
ments of processes of exclusion and discrimination of women, migrants, and ethnic
minorities. In doing so, scholars in these fields examine social stratification, refer-
ring to ‘the unequal distribution of people across social categories that are charac-
terized by differential access to scarce resources’ (ibid.). These resources may be
material (e.g., wealth), symbolic (e.g., social standing), or emotional (e.g., love).
Stratification systems, Massey (2007) argues, order people vertically from a top to
a bottom. A society’s degree of stratification is typically measured in terms of
inequality, ‘which assesses the degree of variability in the dispersion of people
among ranked social categories’ (ibid., 2).
5 Who Is an Immigrant and Who Requires Integration? Categorizing in European… 79

Stratification can be traced in two powerful mechanisms: ‘the allocation of peo-

ple into social categories, and the institutionalization practices that allocate resources
unequally across these categories’ (ibid.:, 5–6). These mechanisms produce categor-
ical inequality, which is ‘a pattern of social stratification that is remarkably “dura-
ble” in the sense that it is reproduced across time and generations’ (Tilly 1998 cited
by Massey 2007, 6). Stereotypes evolving from categorization are usually produced
by those located at the top of the stratification system, namely, the people who con-
trol the most resources. For instance, whites in the USA have perpetuated negative
stereotypes of African-Americans as unintelligent, hypersexual, and violent (Massey
2007, 15). Individual members of the stereotyped out-group tend to experience dis-
crimination and exclusion over centuries (ibid.). Categorical mechanisms are thus
deeply embedded within both the infrastructure of social institutions and cultural
practices (ibid., xvi). As a result, categorical distinctions affect not only formal pub-
lic settings, but also private life (ibid., 7).
States and policymakers use categories to describe social phenomena and turn
them into policy problems on which they can intervene (Yanow 2003). Categories
in this sense can be considered framing devices, with a frame defined as an ‘organiz-
ing principle that transforms fragmentary or incidental information into a structured
and meaningful problem, in which a solution is implicitly or explicitly included’
(Verloo 2005, 20). Categories reflect social realities, but at the same time construct
reality (Yanow 2003). State-defined categories used in policymaking may construct,
implicitly or explicitly, ethnicized, gendered, or classed target groups. For instance,
as a result of labour and postcolonial migration, the Netherlands government identi-
fied among others Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and Antilleans as a categorical
target group and developed specific integration policies for them. Despite the inter-
nal ethnic, racial, and religious diversity within this group, these policies reflected
reality at a certain point in time as immigrants started to organize themselves along
the categorical units of Dutch integration policy. However, the naming of these
groups also resulted in the monitoring of them in official statistics. As a result, their
children—the so-called “second generation”—are also categorized on the basis of
the country of birth of their parents. In this way their identity is attributed.
Categories are crucial for the formulation of policies, and they are a central point
of departure in studies of inequality. Categorical inequality may result when those
in power enact policies that give certain groups more access to resources than others
and systematically channel social and cultural capital to particular categories of
people (Massey 2007, 23). In the context of migration and integration, categories
are used to define target groups for policies. In some countries such categories are
ascribed, while in others they are based on “self-identification”. We described above
the Netherlands’ use of categories based on the birth country of immigrants or their
parents. In the UK people are asked to themselves choose between a number of
broad race-based categories and subcategories based on ethnicity.1 Censuses are a
powerful tool for states to collect information about the “origin” and mobility of
their residents. The European Union (EU) 2008 census regulation requires member

1
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/measuring-equality/equality/index.html, accessed 13 July
2014.
80 L. Mügge and M. van der Haar

states to collect information about residents’ country of birth (distinguishing

between EU and non-EU member states) and country of citizenship (EC 2011). This
has enabled the EU to produce statistics about resident foreigners and foreign-born
EU citizens. Although this may appear to be a neutral activity, state institutions may
reorganize these data and allocate identities to residents that are not at all neutral.
For instance, the Netherlands and Flemish (Belgium) governments have used the
term “non-Western allochthon” to demarcate the target group for integration poli-
cies (Jacobs and Rea 2012; Yanow and Van der Haar 2013). In the Netherlands, the
term is officially reserved for persons who themselves or at least one of their parents
were born in Turkey, Africa, Latin America, or Asia. In practice, this means that
especially migrants from Muslim countries are considered the problem category
(Groenendijk 2011, 22; see also Yanow and Van der Haar 2013). The concept of
allochthon first appeared in a 1971 report on post-Second World War migration
(Verwey-Jonker 1971). The term gained ground in 1984 when the Dutch Central
Bureau of Statistics started to monitor the lives of migrants and their children. The
term appears in policy discussions from 1989 onwards (WRR 1989). The taxonomy
it implies, and especially the distinction between Western and non-Western alloch-
thones, creates a hierarchy between individuals based on their country of birth
(Yanow and Van der Haar 2013). Much analysis of categories has been inspired by
the interpretive study of what is considered to be the problem (diagnosis) and the
proposed solution (Verloo 2005). Studying the diagnostic part of policy texts is a
useful way to uncover why particular groups are problematized and singled out as
target groups, while others are not. The target group is usually formulated in refer-
ence to existing social categories, such as race/ethnicity, religion, class, and gender.
The proposed solution then is captured in policymaking. To understand who are
targeted explicitly and implicitly by immigration and integration policies the fol-
lowing section examines what we term the “policy chain”, which determines which
policies immigrants are subjected to from the moment of their arrival.

Explicit Target Groups and Implicit Hierarchies

in the Policy Chain

Problematizing the mobility of persons is inherent to the idea of the nation state that
presupposes unity of territory, state, and citizens (Geiger 2013, 17). European nation
states and EU institutions have built systems to regulate who can enter their respec-
tive territories and under what conditions. Increasingly, not only immigration but
also the integration of migrants is a policy issue. This section discusses the legal
categories used to define mobile persons and the effect of these categories in direct-
ing a migrant’s route in the policy chain (Fig. 5.1). The starting point is a categoriza-
tion by the EU based on a person’s country of origin. Is the person in question a
citizen of an EU member state or a TCN. This dichotomy leads to divergent paths
determining whether or not migrants do eventually become the subject of integration
policy and whether they will gain access to social, political, and economic rights.
5 Who Is an Immigrant and Who Requires Integration? Categorizing in European… 81

Third-Country
National
Route 1 Route 2

No Yes

Route 2a Route 2b

Legal EU Labour,
citizen postcolonial,
family
migrant
Asylum
seeker,
undocumented
No target migrant
of Target of
integration immigration
or policy
immigration
policy

Illegal

Legal

Target of Target of
integration return
policy policy

Fig. 5.1 Migrants’ routes in the categorical policy chain (Source: Authors)

Route 1: EU Citizens

The first step in the policy chain establishes whether a migrant is a member-state
national or a TCN (Rea et al. 2011, 10). The legal term “TCN” is based on national-
ity and residence status, not on ethnic origin or culture (Groenendijk 2011, 34).
Introduction of the right to free movement of EU citizens (based on the 1985
Schengen Agreement and 1990 Schengen Convention) and the harmonization of
migration law and policy (via the Amsterdam Treaty, which entered into force in
1999) had substantial impact on the distinction between migrants who are consid-
ered in need of integration and those who are not. Yet, although these agreements
82 L. Mügge and M. van der Haar

reduced the legal distance between national citizens and member-state nationals
(ibid.), this does not mean that all Europeans gained equal status.
EU policies start from the assumption that EU citizens, when moving to another
member state as Europeans, are integrated by default. Consequently, integration
policies and facilities have been designed and implemented for TCNs only.
Nonetheless, policy debates, and in some cases policies, at the national level and
even more so at the local level do distinguish between EU citizens. For instance,
migrant workers from relatively new EU members, such as Poland, Romania, and
Bulgaria, are to be excluded from integration policies according to EU definitions,
but their lack of “integration” has nonetheless been criticized in public and political
fora. Migrants from the newer EU member states often face highly nationalized
demands for integration, including language competence requirements and cultural-
ized and moralized citizenship tests (Favell 2013, 5). Prior to Britain’s lifting of
restrictions on migrants from Bulgaria and Romania in January 2014, UK politi-
cians—in direct opposition to the EU’s integration definition—proposed a cap on
social services for European migrants.2
In fact, tensions may result from differences in policy aims between the EU and
its member states. A striking example is the treatment of the Roma from Bulgaria
and Romania in France. Whereas EU institutions have, in the context of enlarge-
ment policy, continuously argued for measures to promote the social inclusion of
the Roma (Parker 2012, 476), this was disregarded by the French authorities.
Following riots and clashes between Roma and the French police in July 2010,
President Sarkozy ordered half of the country’s 539 Roma camps to be cleared to
restore ‘the republican order’ (ibid., 478). Shortly after, the French government
expelled more than 1,000 camp inhabitants, sending them back to their countries of
origin.3 These actions led to a direct confrontation with the European Commission,
which interpreted the French actions as an existential threat to the European peace
project. The EU warned France that it would pursue infringement procedures. The
Commission’s proceedings against France hinged on
the fact that France had not fully transposed aspects of the 2004 Directive on free movement
into its national legislation. This had enabled the country to avoid deploying various safe-
guards specified within this Directive in order to protect EU citizens targeted for removal
either on the basis of their being a ‘threat to public order or security’ or on the basis of their
‘insufficient [economic] means’ (ibid., 479–480).

This example illustrates the clear hierarchy between EU citizens from the West
and those from Eastern Europe. Favell (2013) argues that next to familiar targets,
such as Muslims and undocumented Africans, currently Eastern Europeans (e.g.,
Poles and Romanians) and Southern Europeans (Greek, Portuguese, and potentially
highly qualified Spaniards and Italians) are included in what he calls the anti-
immigration tide. Free movement and equal treatment may be guaranteed in legal

2
www.spiegel.de/international/europe/western-europe-fearful-of-roma-immigrants-from-roma-
nia-and-bulgaria-a-884760.html, accessed on 8 June 2014.
3
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frances-expulsion-roma-migrants-test-case-europe, accessed on
13 July 2014.
5 Who Is an Immigrant and Who Requires Integration? Categorizing in European… 83

and political terms, but it is not a ‘sociological reality’ (ibid., 4). Indeed, ‘not all
citizens are equal and some passports are better than others’. Hierarchies between
citizens lead to a ‘new system of global economic stratification’ (Castles 2004, 223).

Route 2: Third-Country Nationals

TCNs are categorized on the basis of their admission labels, such as labour migrants,
asylum seekers, family migrants, refugees, and postcolonial migrants (Schrover and
Moloney 2013, 257). Labour migrants are characterized in economic terms. They
migrate for reason of employment, either on a temporary or permanent basis. Family
migrants come to form a family (marriage migration) or to be reunited with family
members (family reunification). This type of migration is highly and explicitly fem-
inized (Bonjour and De Hart 2013). Postcolonial and colonial migrants are those
originating from countries formerly colonized by the country of destination. In
many cases, they have—or had—a legal right to settle in European countries
(Hampshire 2013, 18). Policymakers use these categorizations as mutually exclu-
sive groups. But in reality, these broad classifications overlap. People may move
between categories (ibid., 257) or they may use the policy labels available for their
migration project. For instance, many of the guest workers who left Greece, Spain,
and Portugal in the 1960s and early 1970s had political motives to flee the regimes
of colonel Papadopoulos and Makarezos, Franco, and Salazar, respectively.
Applying for asylum in North and West European countries was cumbersome and
risky. In those days it was easier to apply for a residence permit for work.
Many scholars point to the disproportional problematization of non-European
immigrants (Rea et al. 2011; Favell 2013; Schmidtke 2012). Schmidtke (2012, 32)
argues that the term TCN creates a non-European “other” by which the EU repro-
duces a ‘hiatus between the wanted, highly-qualified, ideally Western migrants, and
the unwanted ones from the non-European world’. The distinction made between
wanted and un-wanted follows a ‘utilitarian logic’ of the country’s economic com-
petitiveness (ibid.). The difference between wanted and unwanted TCN immigrants
comes clearly to the fore through visa procedures. Rules of visa application make
use of so-called “positive” and “negative” lists to distinguish between TCNs that
need a visa to travel to the EU Schengen area and those who do not (Groenendijk
2011, 24). Central databases have been created to collect information about non-
nationals, especially since the 2004 and 2007 directives on legal migration. The
introduction of these immigration databases4 is legitimated as a security and safety

4
Groenendijk (2011, 33–34) refers to three databases. The first, the Schengen Information System
(SIS; SIS-II is the new version which includes the possibility of using biometrics) enables exchange
of data about suspected criminals, people who may not have the right to enter the EU, missing
persons, and stolen, misappropriated, or missing property. Second, EURODAC is a system for
comparing fingerprints of asylum seekers and some illegal migrants. Third the Visa Information
System (VIS) enables Schengen countries to exchange visa data.
84 L. Mügge and M. van der Haar

measure linked to the political context of the fight against terrorism, other serious
crime, and illegal immigration (ibid., 33). The lists are said to be based on criteria
such as potential security risk, illegal immigration, and economic relations. The
result is that the “positive” list consists of ‘rich countries and countries in Europe
and the Americas with predominantly white populations’ (ibid.). Besides the
implied distinction based on class and race/ethnicity, the lists also mark a religious
watershed, as in practice they also distinguish between Muslim and Christian popu-
lations (ibid.).

Route 2a: Legal Immigrants and Target of Integration Policy

The group of immigrants that is allowed formal access becomes legal and a target
of integration policy. Particular measures in current integration and immigration
policy practice appear to spotlight female migrants (on women marriage migrants,
see Bonjour and De Hart 2013; on gender inequality as an ethnicized problem see
Roggeband and Verloo 2007; Prins and Saharso 2008), while migrant masculinity is
often problematized (Van der Haar 2013; Scheibelhofer 2012). Bonjour and De Hart
(2013) suggest that the Netherlands’ policymaking on marriage migration is shaped
by the idea of transnational marriages being fraudulent and forced, and (Muslim)
migrant women being the victims of these practices. Scheibelhofer (2012) sets out
how the image of an “archaic migrant masculinity” is used to legitimate restrictive
migration laws in Austria: the human capital, norms, and values of migrant men
have become criteria for their classification as wanted or unwanted. The general
discourse that becomes clear from the abovementioned studies is that women
migrants need to be protected by the “receiving state”, whereas migrant men mainly
need to be controlled. In these cases, “marked identities” (Yanow 2003) again based
on homogenized social categories like race/ethnicity, gender, class, and religion
(often replicated in research as static analytical categories) are reproduced.
Furthermore, negative and pejorative assumptions about groups are especially high-
lighted, resulting in a singling out of particular immigrants to be targeted by particu-
lar measures.
Religion and most certainly Islam is another important factor in prioritizing
women migrants as a target group in policies. These women are associated with
problems ranging from honour related violence, forced and arranged marriages,
genital mutilation, and domestic violence to low labour market participation.
Migrant women with a Muslim background are portrayed as victims of patriarchal
cultures informed by Islam. As many European states perceive themselves as lib-
eral, these women are targeted in family-related migration policies and integration
policies that aim to transmit norms of gender equality (see Bonjour and De Hart
2013 on the Netherlands; for a comparative study on seven EU countries, see
Kofman et al. 2013). But again, assumptions about class, in the form of low educa-
tion and backwardness, are used to legitimize restrictions in family migration and
strict measures of cultural assimilation into the destination society through state
5 Who Is an Immigrant and Who Requires Integration? Categorizing in European… 85

integration policies. Razack (2004), for example, argues that Norway’s culturalist
approach to forced marriages enables the stigmatization and surveillance of Muslim
communities and feeds the idea of European superiority. The assumed causalities in
the diagnoses underlying policy issues may thus have highly exclusionary
consequences.
Critical scholars have stressed the risk of homogenizing, and hereby essential-
izing, identities in policy and research (e.g., Rath 1991; Ghorashi 2006; Schinkel
2007; Bertossi and Duyvendak 2012; Jacobs and Rea 2012). The main concern is
that categories defined in policies at the supranational or state level produce or rein-
force stereotypes that foster prejudices and potential discrimination. The following
examples show how the dichotomy allochthon and autochthon and subcategories in
the Netherlands and Flanders have produced durable stereotypes. These stereotypes
are products of the formal policy chain and—as Massey (2007) reminds us—affect
private life, but are increasingly contested by the children and grandchildren of
immigrants.
“Allochthon” and its counterpart “autochthon” have taken on a for-granted char-
acter in Dutch and Flemish politics, administration, and society (Jacobs and Rea
2012; Van der Haar and Yanow 2011; De Zwart 2012). However, changes are visi-
ble at the local level, at the insistence of a new generation of “allochthones”. The
city of Ghent, for instance, declared the twin concepts “dead and buried” on the
international day against racism (Severs 2014). This marked the official end of the
allochthon-autochthon distinction in the administrative jargon of the municipality.
Since the 1980s, the Netherlands has developed an international reputation as a
multicultural society due in part to its efforts to promote integration of ethnic minor-
ities while also enabling them to maintain their culture. This resulted in group-
specific policies for the largest immigrant groups, among them Turks, Moroccans,
Surinamese, Antilleans, Moluccans, and Southern Europeans (Vermeulen and
Penninx 2000). Both the general term “ethnic minorities” and its various subcatego-
ries became deeply rooted in daily life, though they have not gone uncontested by
substantial numbers of the people labelled in these terms. For instance, during a
local election rally in March 2014, Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch populist
right-wing party PVV, asked the gathered crowd whether there should be “fewer
Moroccans” in the Netherlands. In an indignant response, Dutch citizens of
Moroccan descent started a Twitter campaign under the hashtag “BornHere”. They
posted “selfies” defiantly showing their Dutch passports.5 In the ensuing days,
Dutch politicians, organizational leaders, comedians, and individual citizens of
Moroccan descent mobilized and filed thousands of discrimination complaints
against Wilders.6 This attracted wide support of the established white political elite
in praise of the outspoken Moroccan-Dutch activism. This activism takes on even
greater symbolic weight in light of Morocco’s citizenship law: Moroccans cannot
renounce their Moroccan passport. The Dutch-Moroccan activists thus made a

5
See www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2014/03/dutch-far-right, accessed on 4 April 2014.
6
See www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/20/dutch-politician-geert-wilders-moroccans-out-
rage-pvv-party-anti-islam, accessed on 4 April 2014.
86 L. Mügge and M. van der Haar

public choice for the Netherlands. They were fed up with being seen as Moroccan.
Ethnic minority students at academic institutions across Western countries, such as
Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Amsterdam launched a similar campaign: “I
too am [name of the university].” Here, ethnic minority students were portrayed
holding handwritten signs quoting implicit or explicit discriminatory comments
they experienced on a daily basis (e.g., on forced marriage, skin colour, and lan-
guage skills).7
The message is clear: the children and grandchildren of immigrants represent a
new generation of highly educated and eloquent citizens who no longer accept
being seen as second-class citizens judged merely on their immigrant backgrounds.
They are not different. The #BornHere and “I too” campaigns point to the develop-
ment of stereotypes based on assumptions of a poorly integrated first-generation
immigrant who lived in a parallel society and aimed to return home as soon as pos-
sible. These are not stand-alone examples, but are part of a broader ethnic minority
stance against being seen and treated as outsiders by the majority population, “even
after two generations” (Andriessen et al. 2007, 107; Entzinger and Dourleijn 2008
cited by De Zwart 2012, 312).

Route 2b: Legal Immigrants and Target of Return Policy

Undocumented migration and the entry of asylum seekers are driven by forces—
such as transnational networks—that governments cannot control (Castles 2004,
205). Although the issue of asylum was actually an important incentive for the EU
to harmonize migration-related policies (see Penninx and Scholten in this volume),
it has proven difficult to address the root causes of migration, not least because of
the different objectives of the various EU bodies and member states (Castles 2004,
223). Undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers who are not granted residence
permits become the target of return policies. In many European states, unsuccessful
asylum seekers may be transferred to “detention and removal centres” (on the UK
see Sales 2002; on Sweden see Khosravi 2009); others become “illegals” trying to
live their lives without formal papers. The EU deportation regime has received par-
ticular public attention regarding the position of women (as mothers) and children.
In Norway, the UK, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands media have featured
stories of children who have been sent “back”—sometimes forcibly (Fekete 2005).
Scholars also point to an increasing proportion of asylum seekers being trafficked as
a result of restrictive policies (Koser 2000). Here again, women and children are
especially targeted in protective policies, for example, as a result of the 2000 United
Nations Protocol to Suppress, Prevent and Punish Trafficking, Especially Women
and Children (Hastie 2013).
Undocumented immigrants are vulnerable and caught in between different pol-
icy layers. Formally they are excluded from integration policies, but at the same

7
See http://itooamuva.tumblr.com/, accessed on 15 April 2014.
5 Who Is an Immigrant and Who Requires Integration? Categorizing in European… 87

time many are informally incorporated by local institutions such as schools,

churches, and associations (for an overview of literature on this category see
Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012). As Castles (2004, 223) argues, ‘[policies]
that claim to exclude undocumented workers may often really be about allowing
them in through side doors and back doors, so that they can more readily be
exploited’. At the same time, expelled migrants are attracted by the demand for the
flexible labour facilitated by the large informal economy in countries such as Greece
(Fakiolas 2003).
The presence of undocumented migrants and opportunities for them to settle
vary widely across European member states. Hellgren (2014) argues that undocu-
mented migrants are more accommodated in Spain than in Sweden. Until 1 July
2013 undocumented migrants in Sweden had—in contrast to recognized asylum
seekers—no right to basic healthcare and schooling for their children. This was
amended under pressure of the United Nations, which criticized Sweden for violat-
ing human rights conventions (ibid., 1180). In Spain undocumented migrants are
documented at the local level. They have the same access to schooling and, up to
2012, healthcare as anyone else (Garcés-Mascareñas 2012, 121, 209). Moreover,
Spain has a larger informal population than Sweden. Undocumented migrants in the
former fill a major “care gap”, providing cheap labour in healthcare, childcare, and
domestic services. While in Sweden undocumented migrants ‘reflect a moral
dilemma and challenge to the principles of the welfare state’, in Spain ‘the presence
of individuals without permission to stay may not be problematic for any moral
reasons, or by principle’ (Hellgren 2014, 1184).

Conclusion

Categories form the backbone of policies. This chapter examined how categories
are constructed in immigration and integration policies, alongside who policies tar-
get and in what ways categorizing may lead to stereotypes and exclusion. Processes
of categorization both reflect reality and construct identities as they are understood
by the ethnic majority. Categories furthermore determine the policy route migrants
are subjected to upon their arrival. At the EU level the basic binary categorization is
EU citizen versus TCN, and this defines who requires integration (TCNs) and who
does not (EU citizens). Although European citizens are not formally subject to inte-
gration policy, Western European immigration countries do make implicit distinc-
tions between migrants from “new” and “old” member states. In other, words, not
all intra-European migrants are as equal in daily life as they are on paper. Migrants
from the Eastern European member states are categorized differently. TCNs—i.e.,
migrants from outside the EU—form the general target group of EU integration
policies as well as return and deportation measures. TCNs who are legal, or at least
admitted, become the target of integration policies. Others become the object of
increasingly exclusionary social policies and deportation.
88 L. Mügge and M. van der Haar

Hierarchies within the categories European citizens and TCNs produce implicit
and sometimes explicit unequal treatment at the national and local levels. Some
groups, such as Muslims, are more problematized than others, and hierarchies are
often based on a combination of identity markers such as gender, class, and ethnic-
ity. Hierarchies are bound to national contextual factors, such as the mode of catego-
rization used (top-down or based on self-identification), the type of welfare state,
the scope of certain types of immigration, and the extent to which immigrants are
“needed” to fill gaps in the labour market. Categories create stereotypes that persist
over generations, resulting in patterns of social stratification. Categories cannot be
abandoned in policymaking, but to make policies more effective scholars and poli-
cymakers alike should be alert to their use, scope, and impact.

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Chapter 6
The Multilevel Governance of Migration
and Integration

Peter Scholten and Rinus Penninx

Introduction

Migration and migrant integration policies have become increasingly dispersed over
various levels of government. Besides the national level, the European Union (EU)
level and the regional and local levels have become more involved. In the area of
immigration, EU member states have handed over significant power to the EU, par-
ticularly in the context of the Common European Asylum System. The EU’s Family
Reunification Directive, for instance, significantly limits member states’ policy dis-
cretion in family migration policies. With regard to migrant integration there has
been some Europeanization as well, but this has been overshadowed by a sharp
“local turn” in policymaking. Local governments, large cities in particular, are
becoming increasingly entrepreneurial in developing their own integration philoso-
phies and policies. This has led to cities having markedly different approaches to
migrant integration, even within the same countries.
This chapter focuses on migration and integration as multilevel policy issues and
explores the consequences in terms of multilevel governance. The fact that both
migration and integration have become multilevel issues presents both opportunities
and challenges. Immigration policymaking has been characterized by a constant
struggle between national governments and the EU about the amount of discretion
states have in interpreting EU directives. The involvement of local and regional

P. Scholten
Universiteit Erasmus, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
R. Penninx (*)
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 91

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_6
92 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

governments in debates about intra-EU migration, particularly East–west migration

from new member states, has further complicated the situation. With regard to
migrant integration, even more complex relations have emerged between local,
regional, national, and EU institutions. The superdiverse cities of Europe, such as
Barcelona, London, Berlin, and Rotterdam, have taken policy directions very differ-
ent from their national governments, resulting in a “decoupling” of national and
local policies. While politicization of migrant integration continues to drive policies
in many countries, the EU has developed various soft governance measures aimed
at promoting policy learning between local governments.
This chapter offers an analysis of how migration and integration policies have
evolved at various levels during the past decades, including at the EU, national, and
local levels, as well as in some cases at the regional level. This enables us to under-
stand the factors that drive policies at the different levels and the extent to which
these lead to convergence or divergence between the levels. We analyse the rela-
tions—or absence of relations—between the levels of government. To make sense
of these, we apply a framework that allows for different arrangements of the rela-
tions between levels of government. This is where the notion of “multilevel gover-
nance” comes in as one possible way of structuring relations between various
government levels.

A Framework for the Study of Multilevelness

Regulation of international migration has traditionally been a competency of the

nation state, with the voluntary transfer of competencies to the EU being only a
recent exception to this rule. Migrant integration, similarly, has largely been a pur-
view of the nation state, as ideas about how to integrate migrants are often strongly
correlated with ideas about national identity or the “national imagined
community”.
Various scholars have argued that such nation-based views (Favell 2005) have
also affected migration research. Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002: 301) describe
this as “methodological nationalism”. Bommes and Thränhardt (2010) show that
migration research has evolved in distinct national paradigms or national models of
integration (Thränhardt & Bommes 2010). These models are national ‘not just
because of their context dependency and insufficient clarifications on the conditions
of generalizability, they are national because the modes of presenting and questions
are politically constituted by the nation-states for which migration becomes a prob-
lem or a challenge’ (ibid.: 10). Favell (2005: 47) argues that national models have
been sustained in policy and politics as ‘self-justificatory discourses’, and that this
is to some extent also true of migration research because of the strong policy orien-
tation during the development of this research field. Indeed, in some countries,
nation state-centeredness has been reinforced by strong institutional relations
between researchers and policymakers in the fields of migration and integration
(Scholten 2011; Scholten and Verbeek 2014; Scholten et al. 2015). A national
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 93

orientation, however, could hamper the comparative and theoretical development of

migration research. National paradigms of migration and integration reduce com-
plexity and also introduce a historical-institutionalist bias in explaining and
inadvertently reifying national differences. Bommes (2010) in particular argues that
this has restricted the urge of migration scholars to look for more generalizable
theoretical accounts of differences as well as similarities between countries.
Furthermore, national frameworks obscure views of developments at other levels.
Only in the 2000s did, due to concerted efforts of EU institutions, attention to the
European level increase. For instance, the European Integration Fund and European
framework programmes have promoted cross-national comparative research in the
European setting. Attention to the local level is of a more recent date, and many
times seems to be supported by EU research funding in particular.
Thus, while our understanding of how policies develop at various levels has
increased, there is still a layering of knowledge per level. Studies and literature, too,
tend to focus on just one level, rather than seeking an understanding of the interac-
tions between levels. A next step to widen the scope of studies of migration and
integration policies at different levels would be to explore their consequences in
terms of the relations between the different levels. What sorts of interactions or rela-
tions (or absence thereof) can be identified between various levels of government,
and what are the consequences? The literature on governance in multilevel settings
defines various ways of configuring relations between government levels. Scholten
(2013) brings these different ways together in a typology that distinguishes between
four ideal type configurations of relations between government levels: centralist
(top-down), localist (bottom-up), multilevel, and decoupled.
First of all, the centralist ideal type exhibits a clear hierarchy and division of
labour between government levels. In a multilevel setting, this involves a top-down
relationship between the different levels of government, such as a clear central codi-
fication of the division of labour between levels and control mechanisms to ensure
that policy implementation at the local level follows central rules and reflects the
central policy frame. This implies a strong institutional structure for policy coordi-
nation, for instance, at the European or the national level. The centralist type is
expected to produce policy convergence between the different levels of government.
As such, this type of governance setting corresponds with the idea of national para-
digms of migration or integration.
The second ideal type involves a more localist and bottom-up perspective on
governance in multilevel settings. In this type, policy competencies follow the prin-
ciple of subsidiarity; that is, what can be done locally should be done locally. Local
governments do more than just implement policy; they formulate policies, respond
to local policy agendas, and exchange knowledge and information horizontally with
other local governments. The localist type may lead to greater policy divergence
between the national and the local level. It speaks to what some scholars describe as
“the local dimension of migrant integration policies” (Alexander 2007; Caponio and
Borkert 2010; Penninx et al. 2004), which stresses that local governments are often
confronted with integration problems in different ways than the national or European
level. This leads them to frame migrant integration policies in a specific local way.
94 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

As distinct from these centralist and localist types, multilevel governance refers
to interaction and joint coordination of relations between the various levels of
government without clear dominance of one level. This means that “vertical venues”
are needed where governments from different levels jointly engage in meaningful
policy coordination. These might involve forums or networks in which organiza-
tions from different government levels meet. Multilevel governance is thought to be
most effective when the idea of there being different government levels shifts to the
background, or in other words, when in terms of power a degree of “levelling” takes
place between the different government levels. In terms of policy frames, the multi-
level governance type is likely to engender some convergence between policy
frames at different levels, produced and sustained by their mutual interaction.
The fourth type is decoupled relations between government levels. Such a situa-
tion is characterized by the absence of any meaningful policy coordination between
levels. Thus, in any single policy domain, policies at different levels are dissociated
and may even be contradictory. This type can lead to policy conflicts between gov-
ernment levels. It can also send conflicting policy messages to the policy target
groups, thereby diminishing policy effectiveness. It is associated with divergence
between different levels of policy, reflected in studies finding that national and local
integration policies have increasingly become “two worlds apart” (Jørgensen 2012;
Poppelaars and Scholten 2008).

Immigration Policies

Classic immigration countries, like the USA and Canada, have defined themselves
as nations of immigrants. In contrast, North-Western European countries have not
seen themselves as immigration countries, although they received large numbers of
newcomers from abroad between 1950 and 1974: refugees from the East, immi-
grants from onetime colonies, and guest workers. As we read in Chap. 3, after 1974,
when the first oil crisis precipitated the restructuring of economies and labour mar-
kets and new hands were no longer needed, these countries responded by adopting
restrictive immigration policies. These new policies were framed in the 1980s
(regarding labour migrants and family migrants) and 1990s (on asylum migrants).
Only very recently have countries like the UK and Germany adopted new active
immigration policies—for the first time since the 1960s and early 1970s—to recruit
labour for certain sectors suffering shortages of workers. The immigration policies
developed in the 1980s and 1990s were mostly framed in a nation state-centred way.
For instance, Nordic and North-Western European countries often framed immigra-
tion policies in relation to the welfare state. In the UK, they were framed in particu-
lar by the history of the British Empire. Germany’s immigration policies cannot be
understood without reference to its long history as a “divided nation” and its conse-
quential reluctance to become a country of immigration. In some countries, argu-
ments of overpopulation (the Netherlands) or population decline due to ageing have
played an important role.
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 95

Europeanization

A cornerstone of migration policy in the European setting is the principle of free

movement for EU citizens. This principle, which applies to intra-EU migration only,
has been at the heart of European integration since its inception. The European Coal
and Steal Community (ECSC) established, already in 1951, a provision of free mobil-
ity for workers in this industry. Since then, the free movement principle has been
extended and firmly anchored in EU treaties. It is a key supranational element of the
Europeanization of immigration policies, and has had a clear binding effect on mem-
ber states. Intra-EU mobility increased significantly after the accession of Central and
Eastern European countries in 2004 and 2007. Europeanization of policies on immi-
gration from outside the EU has occurred much more incrementally. First, immigra-
tion and border security were discussed intergovernmentally in the so-called Trevi
Group in the late 1970s. A major step followed in the 1980s when a group of member
states moved to abolish border controls and adopt joint immigration policy measures
with the Schengen Agreement (1985). The Schengen group numbered 26 countries as
of 2014. In 1999, the Schengen Agreement was incorporated into the Treaty of
Amsterdam, though exceptions and opt-outs have continued to apply to several coun-
tries. Thus, a form of cooperation between nation states eventually arose and contrib-
uted to the anchoring of common regulations in the supranational treaties of the EU.
Asylum migration in the 1990s became an important impetus for the
Europeanization of asylum and immigration policies. With the Dublin Convention
of 1990, EU member states formalized arrangements to address the problem of
“asylum shopping”. The Maastricht Treaty of 1993 established a broader frame-
work for intergovernmental cooperation in the field of asylum and migration, under
the so-called Third Pillar “non-binding” cooperation. Perhaps the most important
step towards a common EU policy was taken in 1997, when asylum and migration
were moved to the First Pillar, which involved a much stronger role for the European
Commission and a legal basis for EU activity. This was further reinforced by the
2009 Lisbon Treaty, which “normalized” immigration policy as a core EU issue,
introducing qualified majority voting in this domain and strengthening the role of
the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
It is fair to say that by the 2010s a strongly Europeanized policy field had emerged
on asylum and migration. This encompassed numerous elements: joint border con-
trols (Frontex), the Returns Directive regulating the return of illegal migrants, stan-
dardization of asylum procedures, the EU Blue Card Directive on selective labour
migration, the Family Reunification Directive, which had strong impact on national
family migration policies, and a series of cooperation agreements with migrant-
sending countries to address the root causes of migration. Particularly important in
terms of multilevel governance has been the step by step strengthening of the role of
EU institutions like the ECJ and Parliament, marking a real transfer of competen-
cies to supranational institutions. Nevertheless, via the EU Council, various
intergovernmental working groups, and to some extent also the Commission, the
member states continue to play a key role.
96 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

Patterns of Multilevel Relations in Immigration Policies

Geddes and Scholten (2014a) distinguish three patterns of Europeanization of immi-

gration policies, closely corresponding to the different types of government relations
discussed earlier. One of them is that Europeanization clearly involves loss of con-
trol for nation states, given the supremacy and direct effect of EU directives. In our
typology, this is closest aligned to the centralist ideal type, with EU institutions
exerting top-down control over immigration policies throughout Europe. Starting as
a spin-off from major steps in European integration, like creation of the internal
market and freedom of movement within the EU, immigration was Europeanized
primarily for functional reasons; if there is freedom of movement, then there should
also be a common immigration policy. This is in line with the broad literature on the
gradual erosion of national control over borders and migration caused by globaliza-
tion and economic and political interdependencies between nation states (see Sassen
1999). Here, it might also be mentioned that European institutions, in particular the
ECJ and more recently the European Commission, have played important “activist”
roles in the Europeanization of immigration policies.
A second pattern, described by Geddes and Scholten (2014a) as the “escape to
Europe thesis”, counters the argument that states have lost control due to the
Europeanization of immigration. Reflecting a literature on how European coopera-
tion might rather strengthen the nation state (see Moravcsik 2013), countries may
seek cooperation with their European neighbours to jointly fortify their grip on
international migration. Thus, working together might increase their control rather
than weaken it. Furthermore, seeking cooperation at the EU level might allow gov-
ernments to find ways around the political and legal constraints they face within
their own countries. The escape to Europe thesis provides a good account of the
intergovernmentalist evolution of the EU’s immigration policies. Many EU migra-
tion and asylum measures were first introduced as forms of cooperation involving
subsets of EU member states and discussed in intergovernmental working groups
(such as the Trevi Group) rather than at the level of EU institutions. In our typology,
this comes closest to what was termed the localist model, with the nation state being
the “local” actor seeking cooperation in an EU setting for the benefit of the nation
state while not ceding any substantial degree of control.
Finally, Geddes and Scholten (2014a) identify a third pattern of the evolution of
EU immigration policies that stresses a transgovernmentalist form of
Europeanization. This means that governments seek cooperation in a European set-
ting, even ceding some power and control to EU institutions, in order to gain a
firmer grip on immigration, to the benefit of the nations as well. In fact, this form of
transgovernmentalism comes close to our ideal type of multilevel governance, with
the national and European levels systematically connected rather than one or the
other being in control. Such a transgovernmentalist account gives a very good
explanation for the strong involvement of EU member states (rather than EU institu-
tions) in development of several key EU directives in this area, such as the Family
Reunification Directive. It also accounts for the delicate balancing of national and
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 97

EU interests; for instance, the Dutch government, together with several other gov-
ernments, recently tried to renegotiate the Family Reunification Directive in order
to realign national and EU interests in this policy area.
Apart from the three patterns of Geddes and Scholten, we also observe our fourth
type, “decoupling” in multilevel settings and absence of coordination. The struggles
between nation states and EU institutions, and sometimes even between subnational
governments and national and EU institutions, signal that policy interests are not
always aligned. Conflicts do take place. An issue that has become particularly
prominent in recent decades is that of intra-EU mobility, especially East–west
migration within the EU after the accession of Central and Eastern European (CEE)
countries such as Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Migration from CEE
countries is now by far the largest migration flow to some North-Western European
countries, such as the UK and the Netherlands. Although transition arrangements
were made which postponed free movement for a number of years, the borders have
now opened to all new member states. Many CEE migrants appear to be perma-
nently settling in other EU member states, raising concerns about how to incorpo-
rate these EU citizens into their new home countries. However, policy measures that
would impose an obligation in terms of integration efforts (such as a language
requirement) are considered at odds with the principle of freedom of movement of
EU citizens within the EU. In France, this conflict was brought into sharp focus
when the French government decided to deport large numbers of Roma migrants to
Romania and demolish their camps, thereby engaging in direct confrontation not
just with Romania but also with the European Commissioner on Immigration.
This brief review of types of relations demonstrates that rather than a single pat-
tern, there are various patterns of interaction and relations taking place simultane-
ously between national and EU institutions. It is undeniable that some competencies
have been transferred, but many of these transfers came about at the initiative or
with the consent of national governments and in fact strengthened member states’
control over immigration flows (of third-country nationals). There is no clear domi-
nance of the centralist or localist pattern. Rather, there appears to be a delicate bal-
ancing between nations and EU institutions, as evident in the recent efforts to
renegotiate the Family Reunification Directive and the conflict around Roma depor-
tations. Although this is to some extent a matter of interpretation, we propose that
the evolution of patterns of interaction fits our description of multilevel governance.
There is certainly a high degree of interaction between nation states and the EU in
the formulation of immigration policies.
Besides national–EU relations, there are some indications of involvement of sub-
national governments in these already complex relations. Subnational governments
rarely have immigration policy competencies, but they do have policy interests in
this area. For instance, economic and demographic characteristics of regions may
increase or decrease their demand for immigration. Scotland, for example, advocates
a much more open and active immigration policy than the UK government. Cities,
too, have been important actors, especially in relation to policy implementation, as
they may be particularly affected by the consequences of immigration policies. For
instance, the human consequences of deportation and irregular migration are often
98 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

most evident at the local level. Hence, many local governments have offered forms
of assistance to irregular migrants even though this may be distinctly at odds with
national policies. Local governments have furthermore been important advocates of
“pardons” or regularizations of undocumented migrants. Some cities have even
developed their own “urban citizenship”, counterbalancing exclusionist effects of
national definitions of citizenship (see Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012).

Integration Policies

The multilevel dynamics of migrant integration policies have been very different
from those of immigration policies. Rather than the turn towards Europe described
above, a “local turn” seems primarily at play. This involves a shift away from his-
torically rooted models of integration strongly related to nationally specific models
of identity and belonging (see also Ireland 1994). Such models would imply, in our
typology, strongly state-centric (centralist) modes of governance. Brubaker (1992),
for instance, shows that French and German policies have their respective roots in
deep historic notions of the French “Staatsvolk” (ius soli) and German “Volksstaat”
(ius sanguinis). This idea of national models of integration has been strong not just
in policy but also in academic discourse (for a critical discussion see Bertossi 2011;
Bertossi et al. 2015; Joppke 2007). Yet, as argued earlier, this has led to an overem-
phasis on differences between national integration models, such as the British race-
relations model, the German differentialist model, the French Republicanist model,
and the Dutch multiculturalist model.
The politicization of migrant integration that took place in many European coun-
tries in the 1990s and 2000s revealed the resiliency of such national models. In this
period, there was a revival of ideas of cultural integration, especially in national
political and policy discourses. Throughout Europe this led to policy initiatives that
strengthened the importance of national history, culture, values, and norms in rela-
tion to immigrant integration. For example, during this period the Netherlands,
France, Germany, and the UK introduced civic integration programmes including
tests of basic knowledge about society. Joppke and Morawska (2003) speak in this
respect of an assimilationist turn in migrant integration policies.

The Local Turn in Migrant Integration Policies

Local governments, especially those in Europe’s larger cities, have become increas-
ingly active in developing their own integration philosophies. From a sociological
perspective, this development makes sense as it is at the local level that migrants
meet others, find a job, have children, et cetera. It is also at this level that negative
as well as positive aspects of diversity are experienced most concretely. Also, we
know from research that migrants identify much more with the city they live in than
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 99

with the nation. Hyperdiverse cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, and London embrace
diversity as part of the city’s identity and as a positive anchoring point for local poli-
cies, sometimes in spite of their respective national models. Industrial cities like
Manchester and Rotterdam have linked their traditional emphasis on work and
housing to the new challenge of diversity. This supports sociologist Benjamin
Barber’s suggestion that it is precisely the inability of national democracies to
develop effective responses to migration and diversity that prompts cities to develop
their own strategies with a much greater emphasis on pragmatism, trust, and
participation.
Various scholars, including Alexander (2007) and Penninx et al. (2004), illus-
trate how cities in particular started developing their own integration philosophies,
often in response to the specific local situation. For instance, various successive
mayors of the Greater London Authority were particularly proactive on migrant
integration. Similarly, the City of Berlin had an integration strategy in place long
before Germany developed a national strategy. Penninx (2009) demonstrates that in
many countries policies evolved in large and diverse cities before national integra-
tion policies were developed, as attested to by Birmingham and Bradford in the UK,
Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, Vienna in Austria, and the Swiss cities of Zurich,
Bern, and Basel. In our typology, this fits best with the localist or decoupled models,
depending on whether these local philosophies are in line with national policy con-
tours (as in Germany) or contrast and possibly even conflict with national policies
(as in various cases in the Netherlands). As we will read below, only in some cases
has it led to what we describe as multilevel governance.
The local turn in migrant integration policies has several implications in terms of
vertical relations between national and local governments. Under the centralist
model, local governments would play a role but this would be confined primarily to
policy implementation. Indeed, in many countries we find top-down structures for
policy coordination. In France policy coordination is strongly state-centric, and
countries including Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands have long had strong
national policy coordination frameworks. Often, the way funds are distributed and
allocated is indicative of the division of labour between the national and the local
level. Even in the UK, a country with relatively active local actors, significant funds
are allocated from the national level (including funding for courses in English for
speakers of other languages). However, many studies suggest that the top-down or
centralist model has become much less applicable to the practice of migrant integra-
tion policymaking in many European countries (see also Entzinger and Scholten
2014). Local integration policies tend to differ from national policies in various
respects. Caponio and Borkert (2010: 9) even speak of a distinctly “local dimension
of migrant integration polices”. Some scholars argue that local policies are more
likely than national policies to be accommodative of ethnic diversity and work
together with migrant organizations, due in part to the practical need to manage
ethnic differences in a city (Borkert and Bosswick 2007; Vermeulen and Stotijn
2010). Thus, in contrast to the often symbolic tendencies of national policies, local
policies are driven by pragmatic problem-solving (Poppelaars and Scholten 2008).
For instance, cities might work more closely with migration representatives and
100 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

organizations than a national government would (see also Bousetta 2000). Cities
may also be more inclined to accommodate and support cultural and religious activ-
ities of minorities in response to migrants’ needs and demands.
Others contend that, rather than being characteristically more accommodative,
local policies are driven by specifically local factors in very different directions.
Significant variation in local policies can therefore be expected. Mahnig (2004)
concludes that local integration policies in Paris, Berlin, and Zurich have very much
responded to local political circumstances, often in ad hoc ways and leading to
accommodation in some instances and exclusion in others. According to Alexander
(2003, 2007), differences in local social situations have triggered different policy
responses, with some cities adopting a more culturalist and others a more socioeco-
nomic approach. A recent study of integration policies in Amsterdam and Rotterdam
found that these two cities within the same country and with similar migrant popula-
tions produced very different policy outcomes in terms of migrant integration.
Rotterdam stressed work and housing, whereas Amsterdam was much more ori-
ented towards promoting intercultural relations (Scholten 2013). In other studies
(e.g., Garbaye 2005; Bousetta 2000), a key factor identified as a trigger of specifi-
cally local responses is the political mobilization of migrants at the local level.
Garbaye (ibid.), for example, found more significant political mobilization and eth-
nic elite formation in Birmingham than in Lille. This could not be explained only by
differences between the groups involved (mainly South Asians in Britain and North
Africans in Lille). Another factor was the difference between the liberal British citi-
zenship regime and openness of the local labour party towards ethnic elite forma-
tion compared to the French citizenship regime, which had barred access to many
Maghrébins, and the local socialist party, which had remained very restrictive in
admitting migrants to local political elites.
The local turn of integration policy has a number of implications for governance.
In some cities, it has led to what can be described as a decoupling of national and
local policies. Thus, policies at these levels were not mutually coordinated and
sometimes sent very different policy messages to the same policy target groups.
Poppelaars and Scholten (2008) speak, in this respect, of national and local policies
being “two worlds apart” in the Netherlands, because of their divergent logics of
policy formulation (politicization at the national level and pragmatic problem-
solving at the local level). Similarly, Jørgensen (2012) observes a growing discon-
nect between national and local integration policies. Collett and Gidley (2013) find
that in several countries local governments feel they have to repair some of the
centripetal forces unleashed by national political and policy discourses. As such,
politicized debates at the national level can have a performative effect at the local
level as well.
In other situations, more localist types of relations have emerged. Local govern-
ments have become increasingly active in what has been described as “vertical
venue shopping” (Guiraudon 1997). This refers to efforts by local governments to
lobby for policy measures at the national (and increasingly also European) level.
Scholten (2013) cites the example of the City of Rotterdam, which managed to get
a special law passed at the national level allowing it to adopt stricter policies aimed
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 101

at spatial dispersal of migrants in the city. The city has also been active at the
European level, lobbying for integration measures for intra-EU labour migrants.
Establishment of networks among European cities has become a particularly power-
ful strategy for vertical venue shopping in the field of migrant integration. We will
look at this in more detail later.
In contrast to the examples above, which fit the localist or decoupled types of
relations, institutionalized relations between national and local governments have
evolved in several countries over the past decade towards our definition of multi-
level governance. Germany, in particular, has established multilevel venues for
coordination of integration policies, with a key role for national integration confer-
ences. These conferences bring together actors from various government levels as
well as nongovernmental actors to align efforts to promote integration. The UK’s
tradition of coordinated vertical relations includes its delegation of policy coordina-
tion at the national level to the Department of Communities and Local Government.
Even France, a country known for its state-centric approach, has developed dedi-
cated structures for organizing relations with local governments. Although often not
framed explicitly in terms of coordinating migrant integration policies (still reflect-
ing the French colour-blind Republicanist approach), integration clearly plays a role
in France’s so-called Urban Social Cohesion Contracts and Educational Priority
Zones. These allow the Parisian government to adopt tailored, localized approaches
within the context of national policy. The Netherlands’ government has established
a “common integration agenda” for national and local governments, though it
appears to have been rendered hollow by a lack of central funding.

European Involvement and Nascent Multilevel Governance

Besides the local turn in migrant integration policies, the past decade has also wit-
nessed a gradually increasing involvement of the European level. Nonetheless, com-
pared to the strong trend towards Europeanization that we found in the field of
migration and asylum, the Europeanization of migrant integration has come much
later and been more modest and hesitant (Goeman 2013). There is as yet no com-
mon European policy aimed at migrant integration. This reflects the persistence of
the connection between migrant integration and the nation state. The way that coun-
tries integrate “their” migrants appears strongly related to conceptions of national
identity, history, culture, and values and norms—especially since the “assimilation-
ist turn” described above. Several steps have been taken towards greater EU involve-
ment in this area. Some of these involve EU directives, primarily as a spin-off of the
communitarization of immigration policies. Because of the binding effect of EU
directives, one could say that they to some extent signal our top-down centralist
model of migrant integration, as significant policymaking power is transferred to
the EU level. Particularly important in this respect are two 2003 directives: the
Directive on the Status of Non-EU Nationals Who Are Long-Term Residents, which
provides a framework for policies toward third-country nationals in the EU, and the
102 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

earlier-mentioned Directive on the Right to Family Reunification, which provides a

framework for admittance of family migrants to the EU. Both directives have been
influential as a framework for development of civic integration policies for third-
country nationals (many of whom are family migrants), as they stipulate what inte-
gration measures may be demanded of migrants.
An additional key area in which Europeanization has been significant is anti-
discrimination policy. Two directives issued in 2000—the Racial Equality Directive
and the Employment Equality Framework Directive—establish a binding structure
within which member states can develop their anti-discrimination policies. These
directives are yet another example of vertical venue shopping, as they were formu-
lated in response to lobbying by the UK and Dutch governments in particular.
Besides such “hard” and “binding” measures, which may suggest an EU-centric
approach (fitting our centralist type), specific frames and definitions have been
developed and various non-binding measures put in place which can be described as
softer or more open methods of coordination (see also Geddes and Scholten 2014b).
In 2003, the European Commission formulated its first comprehensive view on inte-
gration policies in the Communication on Immigration, Integration and Employment
(EC COM (2003) 336 final). It defines integration as ‘a two-way process based on
mutual rights and corresponding obligations of legally resident third country nation-
als and the host society which provides for full participation of the immigrant’
(ibid.: 17). Integration is conceived as a ‘balance of rights and obligations’ (ibid.:
18). The holistic approach of policies encompasses all dimensions of integration,
from economic, social, and political rights to cultural and religious diversity,
citizenship, and participation.
In November 2004, the EU Conference of Specialised Ministers responsible for
integration agreed on a set of 11 Common Basic Principles for Immigrant Integration
Policy (CBP) as a first step towards a European framework for immigrant integra-
tion and a point of reference for implementation and evaluation of current and future
integration policies. These principles define integration as a two-way process of
accommodation and stress the importance of language, interaction, and participa-
tion. They furthermore call for the mainstreaming of migrant integration in other
policy areas. Importantly, this step towards a more comprehensive framework was
accompanied by continuation of the limited definition of the integration target group
following directly from migration policies: integration policies are aimed at third-
country nationals only and do not target immigrants who are citizens (or long-term
residents) of another EU member state. They are supposedly already integrated, by
definition, though this assumption has been criticized by local authorities in regions
that have received numerous immigrants from the EU’s newest member states
(e.g., Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria).
Although rather broad and not binding, the CBPs provide a foundation for more
EU involvement in this policy area (primarily intergovernmentalist and thus, in the
EU setting, fitting our “localist” type). Following the CBPs, the European Handbook
on Integration was published in 2004. In 2005, the Common Agenda for Integration
by the European Commission and The Hague Programme were formulated to promote
implementation of the CBPs primarily via soft governance means like persuasion,
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 103

networking, and exchange of best practices. In 2013 the Common Agenda for
Integration was developed further into the European Agenda for the Integration of
Third-Country Nationals, which stresses the importance of socioeconomic partici-
pation and the relevance of the local level in its promotion.
This evolving EU policy framework reflects the EU’s distinctive internal orga-
nizational setting for integration policies. First, there is DG Freedom, Security and
Justice (also responsible for migration policies), which targets particularly the
early reception and integration of recent newcomers, of refugees and accepted asy-
lum seekers, and also of third-country nationals until they have become long-term
residents. It is in this particular part of EU policies that West European countries
have increasingly “uploaded” their cultural integration requirements for new third-
country immigrants into EU integration policies (Goeman 2013). The second set-
ting from which integration is promoted is DG Employment, Social Affairs and
Equal Opportunities. Its programmes aim to promote social inclusion and cohe-
sion. Its sizeable funding is—again—used quite extensively by local and regional
authorities (and their policies) and by nongovernmental civil society partners at all
levels. Equality and anti-discrimination are key concepts (for this reason the
European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) and its succes-
sor the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) were associated with this DG). Target
groups include not only immigrants but also ethnic minorities and the disabled.
Priority domains are equal access to and long-term integration in employment,
education, housing, and health. The new Commission in place since autumn 2014
has complicated the picture even more: DG FSJ has been split into the DG
Migration and Home Affairs (Immigration, Asylum, and Borders) and Justice
and Consumers (Union Citizenship, Free Movement, Equality legislation, and
Anti-discrimination).
In the absence of a clear division of formal policy competencies in the area of
migrant integration, the very incremental Europeanization of this area of policy has
been based on two main resources: expertise and cities (see also Penninx 2015).
Regarding the first, migration scholars from the Netherlands and USA played a key
role in formulation of the CBPs (ibid.). Furthermore, the EU has used various fund-
ing schemes to mobilize comparative research on policy topics that it considers
relevant. From 2003 to 2006, this involved, in particular, the Integration of Third-
Country Nationals (INTI) Fund and from 2007 to 2013 the European Integration
Fund. As Geddes and Scholten (2014b) observe, the initial objective was mainly to
promote the horizontal exchange of relevant information, knowledge, and policy
best practices. Gradually, with the formulation of the CBPs and the Common
Agenda for Integration, these funding schemes have increasingly mobilized exper-
tise to help substantiate the nascent EU policy framework. A clear example in this
respect is the EU-sponsored Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). Though
first established to promote comparison and exchange of best practices, the MIPEX
has evolved into a tool for monitoring member states’ compliance with EU integra-
tion principles, enabling “naming and shaming” of those that do not comply. In the
context of our discussion of multilevel governance, this bears out the potentially
strategic role that knowledge and expertise can play in multilevel governance, acting
104 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

in “soft” but sometimes impactful ways (open method of coordination), especially

in the absence of more structural “vertical” relations between levels.
Regarding the second EU resource deployed in this area, European programmes
have sought to establish a strong relation between the EU and the city level. It is in
these efforts that, according to our typology, we can distinguish the contours of an
emerging multilevel governance framework. With various means, including some of
the funding schemes mentioned above, the European Commission in particular has
actively promoted various city networks on a European scale. These networks pri-
marily involve cross-national horizontal forms of cooperation between cities, but
with strong connections to the Commission. One example is the CLIP Network
(Cities for Local Integration Policies), which since 2006 has brought together some
30 European cities in conferences to systematically exchange knowledge and expe-
rience regarding local integration policies.
Integrating Cities is another network (also established in 2006) organized under
the Eurocities’ working group on migration and integration, a large network of
some 140 major European cities. The Integrating Cities initiative includes a policy
dialogue between Eurocities and the European Commission, a conference series,
the Eurocities Charter on Integrating Cities, and other EU-funded projects.
Another example is Intercultural Cities, which is a joint activity of the Council
of Europe and the European Commission. It emerged from the 2008 White Paper on
Intercultural Dialogue contributed by the Council of Europe to the European Year
of Intercultural Dialogue that same year. Intercultural Cities advocates pluralistic
city identities that respect diversity. The Intercultural Cities Programme was devel-
oped and first applied in 11 European pilot cities and has since evolved. It has devel-
oped the Intercultural Cities Index for cities to evaluate and develop their policies,
and it organizes international conferences for cities to exchange experiences.
Other more specifically horizontal cooperation initiatives have been undertaken
as well, such as the European Coalition of Cities against Racism (ECCAR), estab-
lished in 2004 at the initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The aim of this coalition of cities is to share
experiences in order to improve policies against racism, discrimination, and xeno-
phobia. Some 104 municipalities from 22 European countries have joined the net-
work and adopted its 10-point plan of action.
Besides making a direct connection between the nascent European policy frame-
work on migrant integration and the local level of government, thereby constructing
the most distinct multilevel governance structures in this area today, the focus on the
local level also feeds into the local turn in migrant integration policy described
above. Horizontal exchanges of knowledge and best practices between cities, pro-
moted by the EU, has increased cities’ entrepreneurship in developing their own
integration philosophies. In a number of cases such integration philosophies encom-
pass relations with cities from which migrants originated, as Chap. 10 will show.
One might interpret this as the “three-way process” proposed by the European
Commission in its 2011 European Agenda for the Integration of Third-Country
Nationals, but one should be aware that the local policy actors involved might have
quite different intentions and motives.
6 The Multilevel Governance of Migration and Integration 105

Conclusion

The analysis presented in this chapter shows that immigration and integration poli-
cies have not shifted unidirectionally upward. Rather, we observe a growing com-
plexity of policies in both areas being formulated at various levels of government,
including the EU and national levels as well as the local and in some cases also the
regional level. We observe substantial fragmentation as well, imposing the risk of
“layering”; that is, policies are being developed at different government layers with-
out structural connections. We provided various examples of such “layering” lead-
ing to a decoupling of policies, resulting in potential policy contradictions and even
conflicts between different levels. Regarding migration, we mentioned as one exam-
ple the lack of acceptance of Roma as fully integrated EU citizens. As for integra-
tion, we mentioned the potential effect of national symbolic discourses on integration
processes at the local level. Local governments may move to rectify such effects in
order to prevent interethnic tensions within city boundaries. We also saw the tension
that has arisen from the EU definition of integration being applicable only to third-
country nationals, as local and national governments have expressed a desire to
integrate EU migrants into their host societies in a similar way.
At the same time, various and increasingly effective efforts are being made to
institutionalize vertical relations between different levels of government. Following
our definition of multilevel governance—that it should involve real vertical struc-
tures for policy coordination—we believe that we can speak to some extent of a
multilevel governance structure for migration that has come in existence in a rather
long struggle between national and EU forces, though still in the absence of regional
and local governmental agents. Even in the strongly Europeanized field of migra-
tion and asylum policies—where one would expect centralist policy relations—we
observe that most policies have been developed in a strongly intergovernmental
way. Rather than states losing control to Brussels, they are working together and
institutionalizing their cooperation, particularly that aimed at better control over
immigration flows. However, the coordinated multilevel governance structure
described here pertains mainly to restrictiveness and control of migration. Efforts to
establish a more comprehensive, proactive immigration policies, as envisaged and
proposed by the European Commission, have failed.
With regard to integration policies, partners’ competencies at different levels are
clearly different from those in the migration policy field, and there seems to be no
dominant level. Local governmental agents have claimed and are acquiring a more
prominent position in relation to their national governments, and the EU level seems
to be playing a mediating role. Relations across levels have intensified over the past
decade, and they are both horizontal and vertical, top-down and bottom up. Some
countries are developing vertical structures between the national and local levels,
such as localized policy measures and joint integration conferences. At the same
time, some countries are transferring their strict integration policies to the European
level. Cities are applying pressure on their national governments to support local
integration policies, and they are “venue shopping” at the EU level. An intriguing
106 P. Scholten and R. Penninx

direct relationship has developed between the European Commission and city net-
works on a cross-European scale. All of this is recent and difficult to evaluate, but
in view of the absence of clearly centralist and localist dominance in this process,
the result could be a multilevel governance structure that, more than in the field of
migration, includes nongovernmental partners in the process.
A final observation on the state-of-the-art of the study of multilevel governance
as surveyed in this chapter is that so far multilevel governance has been framed, by
definition, as an EU-internal phenomenon—that is, it includes only levels and actors
within the EU as relevant components. What has been called the “external dimen-
sion” of immigration and integration policymaking—that is, relations, negotiations,
and agreements with countries of origin of migrants and with international organi-
zations and institutions in the field of international migration and development—
does not have a place in this frame (yet). Consequently, the EU’s (re-)definition of
integration as a three-way process does not resonate in studies of the multilevel
governance of migration and integration. The concluding chapter of this book
comes back to this external dimension of EU policymaking and its relevance for
both immigration and integration policies.

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Chapter 7
Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm
and Its Relevance for Integration

Liza Mügge

Introduction1

Interest in the transnational involvement of immigrants has grown rapidly since

1994, when Bash, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc published their pioneering
book Nations Unbound. This book is considered the first major study of migrant
transnationalism. In it, the authors stress the various forms of contact that a substan-
tial group of migrants maintain with their country of origin. The study of transna-
tionalism is strongly rooted in anthropology. Its early authors, like Basch et al.
1994, were US-based anthropologists with fieldwork experience in migrants’ host
country and country of origin (Foner 2000, 49). In Europe, transnational research
gained firm ground in 1997 when the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
of the University of Oxford hosted a five-year research programme on transnational
communities (Transcomm, see www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk). Linked projects were
conducted in single disciplines or were multidisciplinary. Transcomm marked the
emergence of a flourishing research field spanning a range of disciplines in the
social sciences and humanities, including sociology, anthropology, political sci-
ence, law, history, media studies, and geography. Top European journals, like Global
Networks, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, have featured numerous studies and special issues on migrant transnation-
alism. Despite the field’s interdisciplinary approach and scope, disciplinary flavours
remain traceable in the topics selected, research designs, and the methodologies
applied.

1
I thank Blanca Garcés- Mascareñas and Rinus Penninx for their comments on earlier versions
of this chapter.
L. Mügge (*)
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 109

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_7
110 L. Mügge

Fuelled by securitization and politicization of migration, transnationalism also

began to attract considerable attention in public debate around the turn of the mil-
lennium. Politicians, journalists, and policymakers questioned whether
transnationalism might undermine immigrants’ integration. During the past decade,
European leaders across the political spectrum have expressed concern about
migrants’ loyalties and involvements that could potentially compromise their terri-
torial borders (Mügge 2012a). Loyalty towards the country of origin (or that of
parents) became the litmus test of integration. According to Østergaard-Nielsen
(2011), citizens who live their lives across borders pose distinct challenges to poli-
cymakers. The idea of “integration here” and “development there” forces govern-
ments to rethink their integration models.
This chapter reviews the state of the art of scholarship on the transnationalism-
integration nexus. It examines the view emanating from the existing literature on the
relation between immigrants’ transnational activities and ties to the country of ori-
gin, on the one hand, and “integration” in the receiving country, on the other. The
review is guided by the popular political question: Can transnationalism and inte-
gration be mutually beneficial, or is it a zero-sum relation? The next section outlines
the emergence of transnationalism as a research paradigm and its relation to aca-
demic research on integration. The chapter then dedicates a section to each of the
main dimension of transnationalism in Europe: economic, political, and sociocul-
tural. Finally, routes are suggested for future policy-oriented research.

New Ways of Thinking About Integration:

The Transnationalism Paradigm2

Over the past 20 years, transnationalism emerged as one of the major research para-
digms in migration and ethnic studies (Dunn 2005; Mügge and De Jong 2013).
Transnationalism is a container concept and is applied to reveal and understand the
ties and activities developed between individual, collective, or governmental actors
located in two or more countries. ‘A transnationalism paradigm encourages holistic
analysis of movement (including immigration but also subsequent visitation and
communication), and it transcends some of the assimilationist assumptions of ear-
lier migration policy and research’ (Dunn 2010, 3).
To study transnationalism empirically, scholars have attempted to classify trans-
national activities by differentiating between economic, political, and sociocultural
aspects and whether these take place in the home country or host country (Portes
et al. 1999, 222; Al-Ali et al. 2001, 618–626; Portes 2001, 187). Table 7.1 presents
various examples of such classification. Economic activities include remittances to
and investments in the homeland as well as donations to migrant organizations.
Transnational sociocultural activities encompass, for instance, visits to friends and

2
The first part of this section draws on Mügge (2010, 36–39), though the text has been reorganized
and reinterpreted for the purpose of this contribution.
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration 111

Table 7.1 Classification of transnational activities and their degree of institutionalization

Economic Political Sociocultural
Low institutionalization Informal trade Home town Amateur sports
High institutionalization between home community groups matches between
and host country created by migrants home and host
country
Small businesses Alliances of Homeland folk music
created by returned immigrant groups giving
migrants committees with presentations in
home country immigrant centres
political associations
Circular Fundraisers for home Priests from the
international country electoral hometown visit and
labour migration candidates organize parishioners
abroad
Investments by Consular officials Imams sent by
multinationals in and representatives of homeland institutions
the homeland national political to visit and preach in
mediated by parties abroad migrant mosques
migrants
Tourist locations Dual nationality Major artists from
developed in the granted by home the home country
homeland by country governments perform in countries
migrants where compatriots
live
Home country Migrants elected to Regular cultural
banks in immigrant home country events organized by
centres legislatures home country
embassies
Source: Adapted from Portes et al. (1999) and Mügge (2010, 37)

family. Participation in homeland elections is a form of transnational political activ-

ity. The distinction between economic, sociocultural, and political activities is an
analytical one; in reality they overlap (see Van Amersfoort 2001).
To examine the durability of transnational activities, scholars assess their degree
of institutionalization. Activities are institutionalized when they become predict-
able, constant, and structured (see Beerling 1978, cited in Penninx 1988). Activities
are highly institutionalized when they are held on an organized and regular basis,
such as annual festivals and congresses or weekly discussion groups governed by
written or unwritten rules and attendance norms. Activities can also be distinguished
by whether they are initiated and institutionalized from “above” or “below”. Political
initiatives institutionalized from above include governments’ allowing migrants to
be elected to home country legislatures. Initiatives from below include fundraising
among migrants for hometown committees. The durability or persistence of trans-
national activities is important, since many scholars argue that the majority of
migrants who are not—or are only weakly—attached to the homeland “are clearly
here to stay” (Kasinitz et al. 2002, 117).
112 L. Mügge

Scholars have further categorized transnational activities by distinguishing

between various types of transnationalism (Koopmans et al. 2005; Mügge 2010). In
particular, transnational activities may be said to take five forms (Table 7.2). The
first is transplanted homeland activities, where habits or conflicts between ethnic
groups in the homeland are transplanted to the immigrant community (see Koopmans
et al. 2005, 126–127). The second type is transplanted immigrant activities, which
emerge when migrants return to the homeland with skills and ideas acquired in the
host country (Nell 2007). The third type is homeland-directed transnational activi-
ties. Here, migrants in the country of settlement direct their activities towards their
country of origin. Homeland-directed politics generally consist of attempts to
improve the legal, economic, and political status of particular groups in the home-
land. Activities take place either in the host country or in the country of origin. The
fourth type, diaspora activities, is a subset of homeland-directed transnational
activities for groups that do not have a homeland. The fifth category is country of
residence-directed transnational activities. Here, homeland-based groups mobilize
to intervene on behalf of the group’s interests in the country of settlement (see
Koopmans et al. 2005, 127). This typology transforms the straightforward question
“is transnationalism harmful for integration?” into “what types of transnational
activities are harmful for integration?” It also underlines—to paraphrase Bivand
Erdal and Oeppen (2013, 878)—the fact that transnationalism happens not only
“there” but also “here” (e.g., via country of residence-directed transnationalism or
transplanted homeland activities). Likewise, integration may happen both “here”
and “there”, through transplanted immigrant or homeland-directed activities.
Scholars take different positions in describing the relation between transnation-
alism and integration. Bivand Erdal and Oeppen (2013, 872–875) distinguish four
positions in the current literature: alarmist, less alarmist but pessimistic, positive,
and pragmatic. First, the alarmist perspective views transnationalism as challenging
or even preventing migrant integration (ibid., 872). Such fear is particularly great
with respect to violent forms of transplanted homeland transnationalism, when
homeland conflicts are imported to receiving societies and expected to threaten
national security. Koopmans et al. (2005, 142) argue that strong transnational orien-

Table 7.2 Typology of transnational activities

General type Example
Transplanted homeland activities Homeland political conflicts are transplanted to the host
country
Transplanted immigrant activities Organizations set up in the host country are transplanted to
the country of origin
Homeland-directed activities Host country-based groups support or oppose groups or
institutions in the homeland
Diaspora activities Homeland-directed politics among groups without a
homeland or who consider their homeland occupied
Country of residence-directed Homeland-based actors set up institutions for their (former)
transnational activities compatriots in the host country
Source: Adapted from Koopmans et al. (2005, 126–127) and Mügge (2010, 37)
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration 113

tations may be responses to exclusionary citizenship regimes in host states that limit
migrants’ access to the political community. Comparative studies of migrants in
several European countries have found that at a collective level, migrant homeland-
directed activism often takes violent forms. Strong homeland orientations are
therefore argued to be detrimental to integration (Koopmans et al. 2005, 142). At a
more symbolic level, authors suggest that exclusion by the dominant groups due to
transnationalism being perceived as a sign of disloyalty is likely to reinforce
migrants’ diasporic or transnational ties with their own ethnic group (Wessendorf
2007 cited in Bivand Edal and Oeppen 2013, 872; Nagel 2009). Transnationalism
triggered by exclusion from the receiving society is not expected to foster migrants’
integration, as they are kept out regardless of their legal status.
Second, the less alarmist but also pessimistic position views migrants as engag-
ing in transnationalism because it is their only option to survive in a new country
where their ‘cultural and human capital are not immediately applicable’ (Bivand
Erdal and Oeppen 2013, 872). This perspective foresees transnationalism as weak-
ening over time, as its value diminishes as a survival mechanism.
The third view is termed the positive position. This is ‘the idea that processes of
integration and transnationalism [can] be mutually supportive’ (ibid.). However,
empirical findings differ on this issue. Studies in the USA have found migrants
involved in transnational activities to be better-educated, longer-term residents of
the host society, often active in local politics (Guarnizo et al. 2003, 1239; Portes
et al. 2007, 276). In a study of integration and transnationalism among Canadian
business migrants, Marger (2006, 898) concludes that adaptation of groups with
sufficient human, financial, and cultural capital is more individualistic and
approaches assimilation. In contrast, traditional labour migrants lacking such capi-
tal follow a more collectivist trajectory, using transnational ethnic networks in the
adaption process. Snel, Engbersen, and Leerkes (2006) conclude in their compara-
tive study of individual transnational involvement in the Netherlands that the more
highly educated and employed respondents engaged in just as many transnational
activities as those who were poorly educated, unemployed, and dependent on wel-
fare (ibid., 304).
The final perspective is the pragmatic approach, which holds that ‘the likely
reality for the majority of migrants is more nuanced than an either/or choice between
transnationalism and assimilation’ (Bivand Erdal and Oeppen 2013, 873). The prag-
matic approach is dominant in academic work. It states that transnationalism and
integration (or in North American scholarship “assimilation”) are not mutually
exclusive. Influential in this respect are Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004, 1003), who
argue that ‘assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor
binary opposites’. Connections with the homeland and the receiving society occur
simultaneously. Migrants may thus be integrated and transnational at the same time.
Presenting a less static view on transnationalism and integration, without
geographically-bound outcomes (transnationalism = there; integration = here),
Bivand Erdal and Oeppen (2013, 878) propose three alternative ways to capture the
interaction between transnationalism and integration at the individual level: ‘as
additive (the result of the interaction is the sum of the two parts), as synergistic (the
114 L. Mügge

result is greater than the sum of the two parts) and as antagonistic (the result is less
than the sum of the two parts, or one part even cancels out the other)’. For instance,
feelings of belonging in both countries is additive. Synergistic interaction then
occurs when feelings of belonging in one place render confidence to develop
connections—and thus to invest in new feelings of belonging—in the other.
Antagonistic interaction occurs when feelings of belonging in one place diminish
feelings of belonging in the other (ibid.).
A focus on the interaction of integration and transnationalism offers a finer-
grained perspective than the alarmist, less alarmist but pessimistic, positive and
pragmatic view. It shifts the question “are integration and transnationalism a zero-
sum game” to “how do integration and transnationalism influence one another”. For
instance, integration in one domain (e.g., economic) may change the type and form
of transnationalism in that domain. However, Bivand Erdal & Oeppen (ibid.) limit
their typology to the individual level. This is constraining because—as the examples
in Table 7.1 suggest—both integration and transnationalism involve collective and
state actors (on integration see Penninx and Garcés-Mascareñas in this volume; on
transnationalism see Mügge 2010). Moreover, organizations and states are often
eager and highly motivated to invest in either transnationalism or integration in
order to gain support for their own projects. Likewise, states and organizations may
try to intervene in migrants’ private lives if their integration or transnational route is
going in the opposite direction of theirs. As Tables 7.1 and 7.2 indicate, one should
differentiate between the forms and types of transnationalism as well as clearly
specify how integration is defined in relation to a specific form and type of transna-
tionalism. Integration, like transnationalism, is a multidimensional term (Ley 2013).
The next sections review European scholarship from this perspective, drawing on
the three main dimensions of transnationalism.

Empirical Findings: Transnationalism and Integration

in Europe

Transnational scholarship developed in the USA earlier than in Europe. Much the-
ory in this field is therefore based on the experiences of US immigrant groups that
navigated in a context that is very different from the European (cf. Martiniello and
Lafleur 2008). European research on transnationalism has matured during the past
decade; this section takes stock of the recent empirical studies of economic, politi-
cal, and sociocultural transnationalism. The field incorporates studies with a range
of research questions and aims, a diversity of countries of origin and destination,
and a variety of methodologies, from ethnography to surveys. Studies focus on a
single ethnic group or are comparative in nature, focusing on one or more aspects of
transnationalism. Authors agree that it is problematic to propose a causal relation
between transnationalism and integration. For instance, following Kivisto (2001)
and Vertovec (2009), Bivand Erdal and Oeppen (2013, 873) argue that a positive
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration 115

relationship between the two could be the result of the confidence migrants gain
from social interaction, either transnational or not, which then becomes
self-perpetuating.
Instead of looking for causality, this chapter presents an organized inventory of
findings directed by the question of how integration and transnationalism might
influence one another. Where studies have differentiated types and forms of trans-
nationalism, this is taken into account. Despite tremendous variation in the studies
reviewed in this chapter, most if not all point out the need to be attentive to diversity
in transnationalism and integration: who—in terms of characteristics such as socio-
economic status, educational level, gender, ethnicity, religion, and migration
motives—is involved in transnationalism, and who is not (cf. Mügge 2011)?

Economic Transnational Activities

Remittances are the form of transnationalism that is perhaps best monitored by

supranational institutions as well as by sending and receiving countries. The World
Bank estimates that global remittance flows, including those to high-income coun-
tries, reached US $542 billion in 2013. That number is expected to have increased
to $581 billion in 2014, of which $436 billion flowed to developing countries.3
Europe’s top five remittance-sending countries are Switzerland ($19.6 billion),
Germany ($15.9 billion), Italy ($13 billion), Spain ($12.6 billion), and Luxembourg
($10.6 billion).4 In view of the large amounts involved, sending states have shown
great interest in trying to regulate remittances through formal channels. Classic
labour-exporting countries, such as Turkey, have long been keen to manage these
flows (Mügge 2013a). But “newer” sending countries too, such as Romania, have
attempted to exercise significant state control over the money, people, and goods
that cross its borders. In Romania this control diminished with the weakened mac-
roeconomic situation in the 1990s, opening more opportunities for private and
informal actors (Ban 2012). This is not a standalone pattern. Levitt and De la Dehesa
(2003) found that Brazil and Mexico extend more state services to emigrants than
Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in part due to the greater capacity of the former.
Although countries like Haiti are heavily reliant on remittances, policy efforts to
regulate these flows have been hindered by financial limitations and political
instability. Portes, Escobar, and Radford (2007) present a similar conclusion for
Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
Governmental regulation of remittances requires a well-functioning bureaucratic
apparatus. Remittances from Europe to weak states are therefore largely informal.
For instance, an estimated half of the population of Surinam receives material

3
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20648762~pagePK:64
257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html, accessed, 1 July 2014.
4
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPROSPECTS/Resources/334934-1199807908806/
Top10.pdf, accessed 1 July 2014.
116 L. Mügge

remittances, sent by 63.9% of the Surinamese residing in the Netherlands (Unger

and Siegel 2006, 120). Unregistered remittances might equal the amount of remit-
tances officially registered (ibid., 118). These inflows are one of the most stable
sources of income for poverty relief at the household level in Surinam (Kruijt and
Maks 2003). Informal remittance transfer channels are used by illegal migrants who
may feel uncomfortable with established money transfer services or not know how
to use them (Ban 2012, 137). Remittances may also be reverse. A study of Romanian
immigrants in Italy found that migrants who were unemployed or had medical or
legal problems received financial aid from their families back home (ibid.).
How do economic transnational activities relate to economic integration? Several
European studies argue that there is a positive relation between upward social
mobility in the country of destination and transnational commitments (e.g., Snel
et al. 2006) or at least that these are not mutually exclusive (Mazzucato 2008).
Drawing on findings from a comparative case study of remittance practices among
two North African groups in France and one North Indian group in the UK, Lacroix
(2013, 1023) argues that economic transnational activities hinge on (i) material and
social resources resulting from social integration and (ii) patterns of identity forma-
tion. According to Lacroix (ibid.), Punjabis in the UK, benefitting from their rela-
tively good economic integration, have been able to build public infrastructure such
as hospitals and schools in their region of origin in India. Though the economic
integration of Moroccan Berbers has been less favourable, these immigrants’ inte-
gration into French civil society enabled them to link informal collectives of home-
town citizens with external funding bodies (ibid., 1033). Kabyles have been
incapable of establishing similar connections, due to a fragmented civil society
resulting from the civil war in Algeria (ibid.). Carling and Hoelscher (2013) argue
that migrants need both the capacity and the desire to send remittances. Capacity
emerges from economic integration (e.g., secure employment and sound household
finances), while desire may be fostered by identify formation. A quantitative survey
of more than 3,000 immigrants in Norway (ibid.) and an ethnographic study of
Somalis in the UK (Hammond 2013) both confirm that economic integration is
decisive for remittance sending.

Political Transnational Activities

Transnationalism raises questions regarding the territoriality of citizenship and

political participation (Collyer 2014).5 From a transnational perspective, political
opportunities for participation are potentially shaped by both the receiving country
and the sending country. Opportunities in the host country include aspects of legal
status such as national asylum regimes, citizenship, voting, and access to legal
representation, but also the migrant organizational landscape (Vertovec 2003, 654).

5
This subsection draws on Mügge (2010, 28–30), though the text has been reorganized for the
purpose of this contribution.
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration 117

The political opportunity structure in the country of origin refers to rights that
enable the political participation of settled migrants, emigrants, and circular and
return migrants, such as dual citizenship, external voting rights, and encouraging or
discouraging the creation of political organizations (Mügge 2010, 30). Scholars
have argued that strong transnational orientations are responses to exclusionary citi-
zenship regimes in host states that limit migrants’ access to the political community
(Koopmans et al. 2005, 143). But sending states through the extension or denial of
citizenship rights can include or exclude their (former) citizens from political par-
ticipation as well (Freeman and Ögelman 1998). Depending on the citizenship
regimes of both sending and receiving states, migrants may come to hold “dual”
citizenship (Faist and Kivisto 2007).
Some studies of the political dimension of transnationalism find that transna-
tional political participation goes hand in hand with political participation—and
thus political integration—in the host country. Morawska (2003, 161–165), for
example, argues that incorporation in local politics in the receiving society and
political involvement in the country of origin are often successfully combined.
There are numerous examples of diaspora groups that in response to homeland
political developments have attempted to influence foreign policy in the country of
settlement or a supranational level (see among others Weil 1974; Garett 1978;
Arthur 1991; Jusdanis 1991; Shain 1999; Berkowitz and Mügge 2014). Not all
agree that this is a good thing. Huntington (1997), for instance, argues that US for-
eign policy has become unduly dominated by migrants’ interests. More positively,
Mathias (1981) argues that such interests would otherwise be overlooked. Either
way, migrant groups’ ability to work the political system to the point of being able
to influence foreign policy is itself a type of political integration. Certain types of
transnational political activity thus seem to facilitate political integration.
European scholarship on transnational political activities and ties is particularly
well developed on migrants from Turkey, most notably on the Kurds in Germany,
the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK (Wahlbeck 1999; Østergaard-Nielsen 2001;
Van den Bos and Nell 2006; Eliassi 2013; Baser 2014; Alinea et al. 2014). The
Kurds are spread over several European immigration countries. Due in part to the
large number of political refugees among them, many Kurds have remained politi-
cally active around the situation in their homeland (Gunter 2008; Baser 2011). In
the 1990s, when the Kurdish conflict in Turkey peaked and the Kurdish leader
Abdullah Öcalan was arrested, Kurds across Europe protested against the Turkish
state. Mass mobilization of Kurds and their “transplanted homeland politics”
became a concern of European states. Koopmans et al. (2005) argue that such vio-
lent forms of transnationalism are detrimental to migrants’ integration. However,
the scope of such activities should not be overestimated. They are an exception
rather than the rule (Mügge 2012b; on Sweden see, e.g., Khayati and Dahlstedt
2014). Beyond protesting at Turkish companies, embassies, and consulates, Kurdish
organizations tried to influence Dutch foreign policy towards Turkey. To this end,
many activities were organized, including hunger strikes, which imply profound
knowledge of Dutch protest instruments. As such, these activists can be viewed as
politically integrated into the Dutch system. Moreover, Kurds are extremely well
118 L. Mügge

organized at the European level. Dense networks have been established between
organizations across Europe to facilitate joint homeland-directed politics. These
networks are increasingly used as a platform for discussing common issues facing
Kurds in Europe.

Sociocultural Transnational Activities

Research on sociocultural transnationalism and integration can be divided roughly

into studies that quantitatively measure contacts with the country of origin and stud-
ies that focus on feelings of belonging. Engbersen et al. (2013) focus on attachment
to the country of origin and attachment to, or integration in, the destination country
of a relatively new group: post-accession migrants from Central and Eastern Europe.
Based on a survey (N = 654) among labour migrants in the Netherlands from Poland,
Bulgaria, and Romania, these authors conclude that the strength of transnational ties
and integration are influenced by patterns of labour migration. They propose four
types (ibid., 976–978):
• Circular migrants strongly attached to the country of origin and weakly attached
to the country of destination. Most migrants in this category were Polish and
Romanian seasonal workers who had migrated at an older age, had a partner in
the home country, and had no intention to stay for the long term. These migrants
hardly spoke Dutch, had few contacts with native Dutch, did not regularly follow
Dutch news, had a weak labour market position, and were unlikely to have a
Dutch bank account.
• Bi-national migrants strongly attached to both countries. This category was
made up mainly of highly skilled Polish migrants, who earned a relatively higher
income and had no intention to stay for the long term. Though socially and eco-
nomically integrated, they nonetheless maintained contacts with friends and rela-
tives in the homeland, sent remittances, and had property there. Their transnational
connections were fostered by their higher income.
• Footloose migrants with weak attachment to both countries. These tended to be
relatively young, less-skilled migrants without a working permit and intending to
stay less than a year. They did not speak Dutch, had little contact with the Dutch,
and were unemployed or worked informally.
• Settlement migrants with weak attachment to the country of origin and strong
attachment to the country of destination. This category consisted mainly of
highly educated Romanians and Bulgarians who intended to stay at least five
years and worked in skilled professions. They spoke fluent Dutch and engaged in
Dutch social life.
These findings, Engbersen et al. (2013, 978) argue, demonstrate that there is no
strong connection between homeland attachment and integration. However, the
analysis shows that integration can go hand in hand with either strong or weak
forms of transnationalism.
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration 119

A quantitative study of 1,270 immigrant respondents belonging to “old” immi-

grant groups in the Netherlands (Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and Antilleans)
showed that 90% of them maintained contact with relatives in the country of origin
(Schans 2009). The type of family ties, however, differed. Moroccans and Turks
were more inclined to have face-to-face contact with relatives than Surinamese and
Antilleans. Since Suriname and the Antillean islands can be reached only by plane
from the Netherlands ‘this might indicate that the costs of travelling are too high for
many respondents’ (ibid., 1178). Another explanation mentioned is that transna-
tional practices result from migrants’ dissatisfaction with their life in the Netherlands.
In the past decade, Turks and Moroccans as Muslim groups have ‘faced increasingly
negative perceptions regarding their culture and religion. Under such circumstances,
family ties and identification with their country of origin remain or may even
become more important’ (ibid., 1179). Similar patterns are found among other
groups, such as Albanian youngsters in Tuscany (Vathi 2013).
Bivand Erdal (2013) qualitatively studied the relation between social integration
and engagement in sociocultural transnational activities from migrants’ own per-
spective. This author asked Pakistanis in Norway their thoughts about possible links
between transnationalism and integration. Most respondents indicated seeing ‘inte-
gration primarily as a structural and functional issue’ and considered transnational
activities a cultural issue with no direct relation to ‘integration’ (ibid., 994). The
Pakistani respondents in this study considered sentiments of dual loyalty—feeling
Pakistani and helping the homeland while at the same time working and raising
children in Norway—to be perfectly compatible. However, they felt that this per-
spective was not shared by the Norwegian majority. For respondents, cultural issues
were largely outside the realm of integration (ibid., 995).
Nagel and Staeheli (2008) studied 45 Arab activists in the UK. Though they had
different backgrounds, they had a shared political and cultural commitment to the
Arab world—enacted through their engagement with Arab organizations and poli-
tics. They expressed their feelings of responsibility towards their countries of origin
and to Arab people as a whole (ibid., 422). Yet, despite strong emotional attachments
to the Arab world, there was also ‘a strong sense of realism among them that
“here”—their local neighbourhoods, their city, and Britain as a whole—is where
they send their children to school, where they work, and where they should have a
voice in policies that affect them and their families’ (ibid., 424). Respondents sug-
gested that integration is a “two-way affair” involving different but equal groups.
Their position was pragmatic: they had transnational feelings of belonging but spoke
of the need to combat minority self-segregation and isolation from mainstream life.
Dahinden (2009) conducted a network analysis of 250 persons in Neuchâtel, a
small city in Switzerland, to understand how transnationalism is practised through
social relations. Overall 30 % of the subjects’ networks consisted of personal rela-
tions. The findings first show that ‘being born outside Switzerland and not having
Swiss nationality enhances network transnationalism’ (Dahinden 2009, 1375).
Second, the author found that transnationalism diminishes with length of stay. This
study furthermore emphasizes that mobility—having lived in different countries—
as well as high cultural capital—a good education—was associated with strong
120 L. Mügge

transnationalism. Others who engaged in what Dahinden labels as pronounced

transnationalism were the ‘transnational outsiders’: third-country nationals with low
education who find themselves in ‘unprivileged and disadvantaged socioeconomic
situations’ (ibid., 1377–1388). They had applied for asylum but been granted only
annual residence permits. Strong transnational networks may signify a favourable
social position for the highly skilled, even though they may not be locally integrated.
But for the less skilled—the outsiders—it may reflect social exclusion and a lack of
integration. Medium transnational networks were maintained by so-called guest
workers. Their networks were both localized and transnational. The respondents
with the weakest transnationalism were those born in Neuchâtel who had not been
internationally mobile. Their networks were therefore locally focused (ibid., 1376).
Does transnationalism wane over time? Put differently, does the second genera-
tion feel less connected to the parental country of origin than the first generation? In
her ethnographic work among Italians in Switzerland, Wessendorf (2007) concludes
that transnational feelings of belonging among the second generation sometimes
lead to a “return” to their “roots”. Such return migration paradoxically was charac-
terized as the ‘loss of roots’: While still in Switzerland, an important part of their
identity was based on the longing for, and belonging to, their parents’ homeland.
Once in Italy, they lose this feeling and feel trapped in a place which they once
hoped would be their homes, but in which they feel like strangers (ibid., 1097).
The Kurdish experience in Sweden is different. As “Kurdistan” is not an official
country, the diasporic community and movement established over various locations
have become the ‘diasporic home where [Kurds] can find a sense of continuity and
belonging’ (Alinea and Eliassi 2014, 79). For the older generation identity is not
constructed in opposition to the Swedish identity, but in opposition to identities in
their cultures of origin (Turkish, Arabic, and Persian). For the younger generation,
the Swedish context is more influential. For them, feelings of exclusion from
Swedish society strengthen essentialist notions of Kurdish identity (ibid.). Thus, for
the older generation feelings of exclusion in the country of origin determine feelings
of belonging, while for the younger generation the context of the host country is
more significant. Despite differences in identification, the Italian and Kurdish cases
underline that feeling excluded in the (parental) country of origin is as influential for
transnationalism and integration as feeling excluded in the host country.

Challenges for Future Policy-Oriented Research

The breadth of approaches and foci on actors and types of transnationalism provide
insight into some broad patterns. The joint reading of the current literature on trans-
nationalism in Europe points to two main observations. First, transnationalism is
costly. Economic transnationalism requires financial capital, for instance, for remit-
tances or investments. Sociocultural transnationalism requires social capital in the
form of available contacts, but also money to buy phone cards or airplane tickets.
Political transnationalism requires political capital in the form of skills, knowledge,
7 Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration 121

and contacts to work politics in the homeland. Put differently, immigrants who are
low on economic, sociocultural, or political resources are less likely to engage in
transnationalism. How this relates to integration depends on the type and form of
transnationalism. For instance, it is relatively inexpensive for immigrants to respond
to country of residence transnational activities since this is paid by homeland based
actors (such as political parties or religious organizations). But only those who earn
enough to send money to relatives or invest in property—and thus who are economi-
cally integrated in the host country—can afford to engage in homeland-directed
economic transnational activities. Second, many studies show that what happens
“there” has consequences for what happens “here”. Feelings of exclusion in the
homeland may foster integration in the host county, while factual exclusion from
politics may trigger more radical forms of transnationalism to change the situation
in the homeland. Either way, homeland developments are decisive for the form and
direction of transnationalism. It is therefore surprising that it is so often left out of
typologies and reviews on transnationalism (but see Pitkänen et al. 2012).
The current state of the art suggests two avenues for future policy-relevant
research. First, comparable data on transnational activities should be collected in
European Union member states. National governments have thus far tended to take
transnationalism into account reactively, when they believe transnationalism is
undermining integration. However, many European countries do monitor citizens’
social, cultural, and economic positions and, in one way or another, examine their
ethnic minorities’ integration. While issues related to the country of origin are
prominent in public and political debates, they are poorly reflected in official statis-
tics. Hence, our knowledge about the transnational orientations of individual
migrants remains limited.
The second issue that merits scholarly attention is the role of gender and sexual-
ity in transnationalism. Despite scholarly agreement that gender matters in all
social, economic, and political spheres, little research has addressed gender outside
of typically “female” spaces, like the household (Mahler 1998; but see Sinatti 2013).
Existing scholarship suggests that involvement in social networks and transnation-
alism takes very different forms for migrant men and women (De Tona and Lentin
2011; Hagan 1998; Itzigsohn and Giorguli-Saucedo 2005, 896). The general per-
ception is that migrant men play a role in public, formal, and institutionalized
domestic networks of migrant organizations and in the transnational ties these main-
tain with homeland-based actors. In contrast, women seem to play an important role
in informal networks consisting of friends and family. In other words, migrant
women do not succeed in getting out of the transnational “private sphere” (Mügge
2013b). Thus, gendering transnationalism raises new questions about who is
involved in what role and in what type of transnationalism. Finally, a sexuality
prism opens routes to study the transnational experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) groups. This would be particularly welcome,
given the salience of inclusion and exclusion of these groups across the globe and
the prominence of LGBTQ issues on the European policy agenda. Promising topics
for study are, for instance, same-sex marriage migration, adoption of children by
same-sex couples, and transnational political activism by migrants who escaped
oppression on the basis of their sexual preference.
122 L. Mügge

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Chapter 8
Translocal Activities of Local Governments
and Migrant Organizations

Edith van Ewijk and Gery Nijenhuis

Introduction

Linkages between migrant source and destination countries can take many forms,
ranging from informal remittances sent by individual migrants to relatives “back
home” to diaspora engagement policies of sending countries. These relationships
are often locally specific (Nell 2007). After all, migrants send remittances not to
some random village, but to their villages of origin. Some authors refer to linkages
at the local level as “translocal”:
[W]hile people are indeed more and more connected to others in different localities, includ-
ing distant ones, the essence of this integration lies in linking ‘the local’ to ‘the local’
elsewhere and only partly in integration at the level of nation states (Zoomers and Van
Westen 2011, 377).

This chapter examines the translocal relationships that link local governments and
migrant organizations in a country of origin with those in a country of destination.
We define translocal linkages as local-to-local connections across national boundar-
ies created through local governments (villages, cities, or regions) and migrant orga-
nizations. As such, we take a meso-level perspective. At the meso level, actors play a
specific role. They are often involved in more or less institutionalized linkages
through which individual migrants and other actors pool resources, share experi-
ences, exchange knowledge, and engage with one another. These linkages are usually
rather structural and stable, and relatively flexible, and they are able to respond to
local needs (Robertson 1994; Pries 2001; Nell 2007; Penninx 2005; Bockhove 2012).

E. van Ewijk (*)

Kaleidos Research, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
G. Nijenhuis
Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

© The Author(s) 2016 127

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_8
128 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

The bulk of the literature on transnational practices focuses on either the macro
level, such as the policies of sending countries (see Østergaard-Nielsen in this vol-
ume; Østergaard-Nielsen 2011), or the micro level, for example, the remittance
behaviour of individual migrants and the impact of remittances on countries of ori-
gin (see Mügge in this volume). So far, few researchers have looked specifically at
the meso level. Those who have done so have mainly focused on the linkages of
US-based migrant organizations (e.g., Mexican hometown associations) with Latin
America (Fauser 2007; Østergaard-Nielsen 2011).
This chapter reviews the literature on the linkages of, respectively, local govern-
ments and migrant organizations between countries of origin and countries of des-
tination. Three questions are central: (i) What are the main characteristics of these
relationships and what kinds of activities can be observed? (ii) What drives local
governments and migrant organizations to implement these activities? (iii) How can
we assess these activities?
In addressing these questions, this chapter touches upon two overarching debates
that are central in this publication. The first is the increasing prominence of the
migration and development framework (see King and Collyer in this volume).
Related to this, several European countries have established co-development pro-
grammes aimed at linking immigrants and their organizations to development pro-
cesses in the region of origin, often with the aim of stimulating integration processes
in destination countries as well. The second debate is related to this and centres on
whether translocal linkages between migrant source and destination countries and
integration in destination countries reinforce each other or are a zero-sum proposi-
tion (see also Mügge in this volume).

Local Governments as Actors in Transnational Exchange

Numerous governments in European countries of destination support migrant initia-

tives or maintain linkages with municipalities in origin countries. These linkages are
often associated with policies for strengthening social cohesion and integration in their
own societies. The connection between international cooperation policies and policies
on citizenship and integration at the local level is a relatively new phenomenon in
Europe. Reflecting this, there is little scientific research on international cooperation
between cities in origin and destination countries. Although several studies mention
the existence of these bonds and the main reasons for establishing them, empirical
evidence on these partnerships is scarce. There are also few policy-oriented studies.1

1
One policy-oriented study describes 16 cases of European-based city-to-city partnerships includ-
ing bonds between Pajkot (India) and Leicester (UK), Nanino (Colombia) and Catalonia (Spain),
and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and Lyon (France). According to the description, the focuses of
these partnerships were on strengthening development and capacity building in the Global South
only, and no reference was made to involvement of migrants or their organizations. Only in the
Leicester case was reference made to engagement of the community in Leicester and new skills in
cross-cultural work (Smith n.d.).
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 129

Before discussing the role of local governments, it is important to note that gov-
ernment structures vary widely within Europe, in terms of their extent of decentral-
ization and the mandates of local governments. These differences have a strong
effect in the shaping of immigration and immigrant policies, as well as on interna-
tional cooperation policies (Juzwiak et al. 2014). Beyond the extent of decentraliza-
tion, the kind of local government entities involved in international cooperation
varies widely. Whereas in Spain and Italy regions fulfil an important role, in the
Netherlands international exchange is usually executed by municipalities, with
regions playing only a minor role. Two general observations can be made: (i) not all
European destination countries have experienced engagement of local governments
in international cooperation with origin countries, (ii) in those countries where they
do engage, only a limited number of local governments are involved.

Characterizing the Transnational Activities of Local

Governments

Local governments in migrant destination countries are said to have certain advantages
over national authorities in stimulating integration and strengthening social cohesion:
they are better at engaging with migrant organizations due to their closer proximity,
and they are thought to be more capable of identifying the relevant integration priori-
ties and devising tailored policies (Penninx 2009). Migrants, moreover, often feel
more emotionally connected to the city than the country they live in. Whereas the city
is associated with a diverse group of people, the country is more associated with one
nationality (Bockhove 2012; Van der Welle 2011; Entzinger 2006). Local govern-
ments are also likely to be more open to migrant transnational affiliations compared to
national governments (Bauböck 2003a, b in Østergaard-Nielsen 2011).
In the literature on city-to-city partnerships, several authors emphasize the power
of these partnerships in terms of strengthening local governance processes, while
two-way knowledge exchange also occurs (Johnson and Wilson 2009; Van Ewijk
2013).
There are two main types of linkages between cities, villages, or regions. The
first is local governments—the administrative bodies, town halls, or policy depart-
ments—in origin and destination countries working together in city-to-city or town-
to-town partnerships. The bodies involved (e.g., social affairs, police, or fire
department) typically work either with other local government bodies or in collabo-
ration with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. The
second type of linkage is that in which a local government supports co-develop-
ment2 initiatives of the nongovernmental actors in their jurisdiction without being
actively involved in the transnational exchange (Van Ewijk 2013). The engagement

2
We define co-development as the involvement of migrants and migrant organizations in develop-
ment cooperation programmes linked to the migration and development policies of European
donor countries.
130 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

of immigrants in such cooperation projects is generally thought to enhance their

integration in the destination country. The practices of municipalities differ widely
between countries. For example, direct local government support is central in link-
ages based in the Netherlands, whereas support to NGO initiatives is central in those
based in Spain (Acebillo-Baqué and Østergaard-Nielsen 2011; Van Ewijk 2013;
Fauser 2007).
Local governments involved in transnational exchanges with countries of origin
might focus on the countries where specific groups of migrants originate from or
have an open policy towards all migrant groups. Most of the initiatives studied
include the migrant groups that have been living in the countries of destination for
a relatively long period of time, like labour migrants who migrated to Western
Europe in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Moroccan and Turkish migrants in the
Netherlands) or migrants originating from former colonies (e.g., people from
Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Morocco, and Tunisia migrating to
France). Linkages with “new” emigrant countries, like Afghanistan and Sudan, are
not mentioned in the literature. Ties between Eastern and Western European coun-
tries linked to the presence of migrants originating from Eastern Europe and resid-
ing in Western Europe, are similarly not discussed, and therefore fall outside the
scope of this review.

Motives and Frames of the Transnational/Translocal Activities

of Local Governments

Five factors explain why municipalities that host large migrant groups undertake
transnational activities. First, stimulating integration and strengthening social cohe-
sion in response to increased heterogeneity were important reasons for European
municipalities to start cooperating with migrant origin countries (Schep et al. 1995;
Shuman 1994; Van Ewijk 2013; Østergaard-Nielsen 2011). Bilgili and Agimi
(2015) argue that integration has consistently been a goal for German municipali-
ties to start cooperation with origin countries, although it is not always explicitly
addressed. Strengthening community coherence has also been cited as a reason for
local authorities to be involved in international exchange programmes (Green et al.
2005; Bilgili and Agimi 2015). Cities started transnational activities in the 1990s, a
few decades after the first large-scale migration to Western Europe. Many initiatives
were established between 2000 and 2008, against a background of economic growth
coupled with increased societal tensions due to 9/11 (2001) and the terrorist attacks
in Madrid (2004) and London (2005). Most partnerships were set up in destination
countries, although some local governments in origin countries took the initiative to
establish partnerships. A group of Moroccan municipalities, for instance, took the
lead in seeking cooperation with Dutch local governments through the Association
of Dutch Municipalities (Van Ewijk 2013). Most West European municipalities
already had experience with international cooperation that they could build on, and
linking with migrant source countries was a logical next step (Østergaard-Nielsen
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 131

2011; Van Ewijk 2013). Budget cuts and fragile political and public support for
international cooperation meant that some municipalities were seeking ways to
benefit from international cooperation. Strengthening social cohesion was consid-
ered a way to do so. For these municipalities, the question was “why don’t we link
our international cooperation policies to integration policies so that we can gain
something from the international exchanges” rather than “can international coop-
eration provide a new, creative way to stimulate integration”. Local authorities in
sending countries are often restricted by limited capacity and insufficient legal com-
petence to be involved in international cooperation (Bilgili and Agimi 2015; Van
Ewijk 2013).
Second, migrant groups often catalyse transnational activities.3 In municipalities
that host large migrant populations, the translocal linkages already established at the
civil society level may stimulate local governments to also get involved in interna-
tional cooperation. In some cases, representatives of local governments with roots
in origin countries (like Dutch or German city councillors and policy advisors of
Moroccan and Turkish descent) have taken the lead in establishing local govern-
ment initiatives (Bilgili and Agimi 2015; Van Ewijk 2013).
Third, national government policies or organizations operating at a regional or
national level have played a stimulating role. According to Van Ewijk (2013),
nationally funded support programmes have had a strong impact on the partnerships
between Dutch municipalities and municipalities in Morocco and Turkey. Most of
these programmes have focused on transferring knowledge from destination to ori-
gin countries, to strengthen local governance processes in the latter. Østergaard-
Nielsen (2011) observes that a development cooperation agency of the municipalities
in Catalonia fulfilled an important role in stimulating transnational engagement.
Fourth, the mobility of people between origin and destination countries creates
particular challenges, which have motivated local governments to start cooperating.
To combat cross-border criminal activities and transnational terrorism, for example,
international cooperation between actors operating at the local level may be required
(Piperno and Stocchiero 2005).4
Finally, Grillo and Riccio (2004) point out that ambiguity might accompany co-
development initiatives, as local-level actors, including local governments, may use
linkages to stimulate remigration. Diatta and Mbow (1999, 254) observe that an
AIDS project with Senegal was linked to an examination of the possibilities for the
voluntary return of Senegalese migrants, while Schmidt di Friedberg (2000) notes
that the anti-immigrant regional party in Italy (the Northern League) encouraged

3
In the Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Turkish partnerships studied by Van Ewijk (2013), migrants
also acted as translators and facilitators in the process of knowledge exchange and learning, and as
resource persons for knowledge and networks.
4
Terrorism and security are also directly linked to integration policies. Piperno and Stocchiero
(2005) introduce the term “transnational integration”, referring to the requirement for more effec-
tive integration policies at the local level, based on intercultural dialogue and the sharing of human
and democratic rights and obligations. They argue that local governments can fulfil a specific role
in promoting new forms of governance and partnerships with migrants, civil society organizations,
and the private sector.
132 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

NGOs to engage in development with the objective of halting immigration (Grillo

and Riccio 2004). In 2011, the right-wing Belgian political party Vlaams Blok
established contacts with Emirdağ (Turkey) and launched a campaign to stimulate
the remigration of citizens of Turkish descent from Gent to Emirdağ called “Emirdağ
Needs You”. The campaign provoked strong negative reactions from people of
Turkish descent living in Gent (Van Ewijk 2013).
It should be noted that economic motives have also played a role in initiating
cooperation between migrant origin and destination countries. Local governments
hope to stimulate transnational investments from companies. The literature, how-
ever, contains few examples where these motives were central.

Impacts of Local Governments’ Transnational Activities

Before discussing the impacts of local governments’ transnational activities, it is

important to note that because these policies peaked between 2000 and 2008, most
research focuses on this period. Furthermore, empirical evidence of impacts is
scarce. A few studies indicate that the city-to-city linkages have indeed helped to
strengthen social cohesion in destination countries, although they do not discuss
impacts in detail. Examples include cooperation between two London boroughs and
partners in Sierra Leone and Bangladesh, respectively (Evans 2009). Grillo and
Riccio (2004) discuss the work of Cuffini and colleagues (1993), who argue that the
city-to-city linkages between French and African countries (including several coun-
tries of origin) were relevant in combating racism in France. Similar impacts are
reported for city-to-city linkages connecting the Netherlands with Morocco and
Turkey (Van Ewijk 2013).
According to Van Ewijk (ibid.), Dutch actors have learned about issues related to
integration through exchanges and, moreover, linkages between institutions and
citizens of Moroccan and Turkish descent were to some extent also strengthened.
The international programmes either functioned as “icebreakers” between formal
institutions and migrant groups, or facilitated learning on sociocultural issues. For
instance, teachers involved in an exchange programme with Turkey said they could
now communicate more easily with the parents of Turkish children at their school.
Police officers who had visited a Moroccan partner municipality reported that they
could now better relate to migrant groups, as they had acquired an understanding of
the challenges faced by migrants living in their municipality. The cooperation
between the police department of Rotterdam and that of Casablanca is an example
of transnational exchange on terrorism and transnational crime. This programme
has enabled the Rotterdam police to build networks and knowledge about how the
Moroccan police operate (e.g., its hierarchical organization), facilitating coopera-
tion with Morocco in tracing people suspected of criminal activities (ibid.).
Knowledge about impacts in origin countries is extremely limited. According to
Van Ewijk (ibid.), several of the Dutch–Moroccan and Dutch–Turkish municipal
partnerships she studied had a dual focus: to strengthen social cohesion in the
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 133

Netherlands and to strengthen local governance processes in Morocco and Turkey

(usually in terms of service delivery and citizen participation). The partnerships
were particularly important in promoting multi-stakeholder collaboration, as the
exchanges stimulated cooperation between governmental and nongovernmental
actors in both Morocco and Turkey. In the cases studied, few linkages between gov-
ernmental and nongovernmental actors had existed before the partnership was cre-
ated. For instance, in a partnership between Haarlem (the Netherlands) and Emirdağ
(Turkey), the University of Afyon worked together with a primary school, an envi-
ronmental NGO, a provincial environmental organization, and the municipality to
improve the waste management system and introduce a waste collection system.
These arrangements should be viewed against the background of the decentraliza-
tion processes that are taking place in many countries, including Turkey, whereby
responsibilities and budgets are being transferred from the central to the local gov-
ernment level. Hence, local governments are increasingly seeking to work in multi-
actor arrangements (Pierre 2000; Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden 2001).
There are few examples of local governments in North-Western Europe support-
ing NGO co-development initiatives without being actively involved in the exchange.
Nonetheless, the idea of co-development was well established by the late 1990s in
France, where it received official acknowledgement and also influenced govern-
ments and policies elsewhere in Europe (Grillo and Riccio 2004). The approach was
central in Catalonia where a large number of local governments were engaged in
supporting the initiatives of community-based organizations and NGOs (Østergaard-
Nielsen 2011). This phenomenon was also observed in Italy, although few Italian
local authorities actually engaged in co-development projects (Grillo and Riccio
2004). Research on the impacts of these activities is scarce. According to Østergaard-
Nielsen (2011, 36), it will only be possible to evaluate the dynamics of co-
development policies once more programmes have run their course. Most studies
refer to various initiatives or analyse the impacts of these programmes on the groups
of migrants who undertake the activities. Although most co-development pro-
grammes are open to all migrant groups living in municipalities in destination coun-
tries, among initiatives in origin countries those of West African migrants are clearly
dominant. The migrant collectives with the highest participation rates in Catalonia
were comprised of migrants from Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, and Gambia, though
the migrant populations originating from these countries represents only 3 % of the
total migrant population. The two largest groups in Catalonia (Moroccan and
Ecuadorian migrants) were less involved, and representatives of these groups indi-
cated that they were focusing more on integration processes within Catalonia
(Østergaard-Nielsen 2011). The literature describes several other initiatives by West
African migrants, including those of Malian migrants living in Saint Denis, a suburb
of Paris (Petiteville 1995; Grillo and Riccio 2004). A limited number of initiatives
by Italo–Senegalese organizations and Senegalese organizations linked to or super-
vised by Italian organizations are also mentioned (Grillo and Riccio 2004). Grillo
and Riccio discuss the importance of transnational networks but also note problems
of control and misunderstandings related mainly to naive expectations and the ideal-
ization of partners. Policies are sometimes also received with scepticism by migrants,
134 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

as they feel they are ‘token participants without any real influence’ (Østergaard-
Nielsen 2011, 32). Grillo and Riccio (2004, 109) conclude that co-development is
‘no better nor worse than more conventional forms of development’.
An interesting “three-way” integration process is that of some municipal partner-
ships, whereby countries of origin play a role in supporting the integration process
in destination countries. Gilgili & Agimi (2015) refer to examples of direct subna-
tional support for emigrant employment, health care, and political participation.
Van Ewijk (2013) reports, for instance, that administrative staff and policy advisors
of municipalities in northern Morocco were willing to dedicate time and knowledge
to strengthen the integration of Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands, as they felt
the Moroccan migrants were trapped between two countries with different cultures.
As the former mayor of Al Hoceima (Morocco) put it, ‘It was obvious that these
people did not have a good relationship with their father or their mother. It’s not
their fault; it is the parents’ (cited in Van Ewijk 2013, 207). The limited engagement
of parents of Moroccan descent with their children’s Dutch schooling was one of the
key issues discussed, and Moroccan officials were also involved in stimulating
migrants to participate in elections. Community-based organizations that have been
part of a city-to-city partnership have also been actively involved in exchanging
knowledge on issues related to integration. An example is an exchange between
women’s organizations in Meppel (the Netherlands) and Al Hoceima, whereby
women of Moroccan descent in Meppel were challenged by women in Al Hoceima
to play a stronger role in their own municipality.
As discussed elsewhere in this chapter, few examples of these “three-way” inte-
gration process are described in the literature, and there is limited knowledge about
the role of local authorities in sending countries. These activities are hampered by
the limited capacity and mandates of local authorities in origin countries, and obvi-
ously they can only contribute to immigration integration in cooperation with local
authorities in destination countries (Bilgili and Agimi 2015).

Linking the Local Level “Here” and “There”:

Migrant Organizations

There is an impressive number of migrant organizations in Europe (see Riccio 2008,

227; Cebolla Boado and López-Sala 2012; Van Heelsum and Voorthuysen 2002;
Van Heelsum 2004). These organizations are highly diverse. Some have a religious
function (e.g., the Ghanaian migrant churches in the UK and the Netherlands),
while others focus on sports and leisure. Specific groups may also be targeted, such
as youth, women, and particular ethnic groups. Moreover, migrant organizations
perform multiple roles. They may facilitate the integration of their members in the
destination country by providing information, for example, about housing, daycare,
and health services, as well language and integration courses (they sometimes also
deliver such courses). By connecting migrants with one another in destination coun-
tries, they help to build the migrant network.
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 135

Another role played by many migrant organizations, and particularly hometown

associations, is to link a region of origin with the destination country. It is this role
that we examine in this section, addressing the main characteristics of the transna-
tional activities of migrant organizations, discussing the background of these activi-
ties and the factors that explain the start of these activities, and analysing these
activities. The transnational engagement of migrant organizations is a relatively
new field of study that began in the USA with research on Latin American (Portes
et al. 2007; Orozco and Garcia-Ganello 2009), Chinese (Portes and Zhou 2012), and
Indian migrant collectives (Agarwala 2015). Until recently, few studies were avail-
able on the European context; but that body of literature is growing rapidly.5

Characterizing the Transnational Activities of Migrant

Organizations

Most migrant organizations have some form of contact with the country of origin.
The intensity of this contact varies from rather incidental to structural. As such, not
all migrant organizations can be considered “transnational” or “translocal”. The
core business of the great majority is focused on the country of destination, to facili-
tate the integration of migrants in the host society. The relationship of migrant orga-
nizations with the country of origin can take many forms, and several categories of
activities can be distinguished. For instance, organizations can play the role of bro-
ker or political activist, or be a charity or a professional development organization.
These roles are not mutually exclusive.
Many migrant organizations perform the role of a broker between the migrant
and the country of origin in the practical organization of essential lifecycle events,
such as marriage, child birth, and funerals. Examples are migrant organizations that
assist in repatriation of the deceased. Migrants often prefer to be buried in the coun-
try of origin, which is a costly and complex practice for families, as it requires
extensive paperwork and knowledge of the system (Mazzucato and Kabki 2009).
Lacroix (2010a) describes how in France the organizations of Algerian Kabyle ful-
filled this role to build a bridge between the host society and the region of origin.
Another example of an intermediary role played by migrant organizations is in pay-
ments of migrants’ community taxes in the country of origin to compensate for not
performing communal duties. Migrant organizations collect this money and forward
it to the community in the region of origin.
Migrant organizations may embark on political activism, as a strategy to change
political structures in the country of origin. This may range from advocacy work to

5
See also Mazzucato and Kabki (2009) on Ghanaian migrant associations; Nijenhuis and Zoomers
(2015) on Ghanaian, Surinamese, and Moroccan organizations in the Netherlands; Godin et al.
(2012) on Congolese and Moroccan associations in Belgium; Lacroix and Dumont (2012) on
Moroccan associations in France; Cebolla Boado and López Sala (2012) on various migrant asso-
ciations in Spain; Van Naerssen et al. (2006) on African migrant organizations in the Netherlands;
and Grillo and Riccio (2004) on Senegalese initiatives in Italy.
136 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

electoral participation and features strong affiliation with particular political parties
and a questioning of governance systems. Several political parties in origin coun-
tries have established branch organizations in countries of destination to reach out
to the diasporas. Associations of migrants of Moroccan decent offer an example of
strong political involvement, and several of these organizations have argued for
political reform and democratization (Bakewell 2009). Related to political involve-
ment is the claim for an improved rights position and the quest for improved condi-
tions of return migration.
Migrant organizations may also be involved in charities, targeting their villages
or region of origin. For some, the charity is their main activity and raising resources
to support a specific project is their core business. They do so by organizing infor-
mation meetings within their community, holding fairs to raise money, and approach-
ing companies in their networks. These resources can be in-cash or in-kind. An
example of the latter is computer equipment sent to schools in Surinam, or shipping
the complete contents of a hospital to Ghana. Charities are often relatively short-
term, small-scale activities with a limited scope and are comparatively simple to
implement. They aim to provide direct relief, for example, after an emergency and
to satisfy certain needs. This kind of activity is very common among migrant orga-
nizations and has been a central practice from the time the first migrants set foot in
Europe. Lacroix (2005) recalls, in this respect, the construction of a mosque in
Morocco in the 1960s by migrants based in France.
A final category of activities can be classified as more professionally developed
international development cooperation. These activities aim explicitly to stimulate
development beyond the individual level in the country or village of origin. This
category differs from the previous one in terms of the professionalization, budget,
scale, and scope of activities. They are often implemented in the form of pro-
grammes and projects to stimulate development with a structural character.
Resources to finance these activities may stem from state agencies and NGOs work-
ing in development cooperation. Sankofa is one such organization. It is based in the
Netherlands and implements activities such as a family poultry project in Ghana.
The transnational activities of migrant organizations require the involvement of
third parties. The local counterpart in the region of origin facilitates implementation
of activities, keeps an eye on progress, and negotiates with stakeholders. The great
majority of migrant organizations collaborate with a partner in the country or local-
ity of origin, sometimes through a local NGO, sometimes through relatives, and
sometimes through a counterpart organization established by the migrant
organization especially for this purpose (Nijenhuis and Zoomers 2015; Godin et al.
2012; Lacroix and Dumont 2012). Besides these direct partners in the country of
origin, migrant organizations collaborate with local and national governments there.
Such collaboration is often mandatory to obtain permits for constructing schools
and health posts, and is often considered “a necessary evil”. However, positive col-
laborations with local governments are also mentioned, such as the partnership
between Stichting Twiza Fonds (in the Netherlands) and the Moroccan municipality
of Dar El Kebdani (Nijenhuis and Zoomers 2015) and, as mentioned earlier, various
initiatives being implemented under the umbrella of municipal partnerships.
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 137

Motives and Frames of Translocal Activities of Migrant

Organizations

Although studies of the transnational activities of migrant organizations are advanc-

ing, few address the question of why migrant organizations, as collectives, become
transnationally active (Morales and Jorba 2010; Lacroix 2010a). The motives that
do emerge encompass four categories: moral, political, economic, and philan-
thropic. Moral bonds lie at the basis of many of the transnational activities of
migrant organizations. These bonds are strongly associated with the relationship
between migrants in the destination country and the non-migrants remaining in the
village of origin. Migration impacts the identity of a community and changes the
roles or the status of the individuals attached to that community. Migration both
separates and binds people. Villagers may support each other by providing money,
offering places to stay, and establishing care systems for those who remain. As such,
migration shapes a “moral framework” (Lacroix 2010a, 10). The role of migrant
collectives, hometown associations in particular, is to guarantee that migrants com-
ply with all kinds of communal duties while they are abroad, as “long-distance vil-
lagers” (Lacroix 2010a, 10; Godin et al. 2012; Fox and Bada 2008). Moreover,
migrants’ participation in development projects gives them a certain legitimacy
towards the non-migrants (Lacroix 2009; see also Henry and Mohan 2003, 615).
The quest by migrant organizations to engender political change in their country
of origin can be a driver of transnational activities. In this respect, the question is to
what extent the activities of migrant organizations can be considered political trans-
nationalism. Some authors consider almost all activities to be political, as they
change the local development scene and force local actors to react. Here, we use a
narrower interpretation of the concept of political transnationalism as those activi-
ties that are directly related to political participation. Examples are efforts to extend
political rights to migrant communities, to reincorporate returnees into home-
country politics, to empower local communities as a starting point for wider politi-
cal change, and calls for democracy and political reform (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003;
Itzigsohn 2000). Lacroix and Dumont (2012) mention in this respect the emergence
of “a political voice” of Moroccan associations abroad. Moroccan migrant
organizations have called attention to the contradiction between the impossibility of
renouncing the Moroccan nationality and the lack of the right to vote and be repre-
sented in parliament. Economic motives of migrant organizations can be confined
to the country of origin or extend to other developing countries. For instance, by
pooling funds for investments in income-generating activities, migrant organiza-
tions may expect economic profit in the long run. Furthermore, by investing in the
local economy, migrant collectives (e.g., hometown associations) might seek to
improve the conditions for their own return (Schüttler 2008; Lacroix 2005; Henry
and Mohan 2003).
Altruistic motives are another driver of the transnational activities of migrant
organizations. Several studies point to the fact that migrant organizations, as collec-
tives, want to do something for their communities back home. They feel privileged
138 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

because of the opportunities offered to them in their new home country, such as
access to education, good health services, and a relatively high standard of living,
and they want to share some of this acquired wealth with their relatives in the coun-
try of origin. This is distinct from the moral motive, as it is less focused on maintain-
ing specific relationships with the village of origin, as set in a moral framework with
migrants still being considered part of the village of origin. Philanthropy is particu-
larly mentioned among recently established migrant organizations and among orga-
nizations involved in charities (Lacroix 2010b; Nijenhuis and Zoomers 2015).
Over time, changes have occurred in the character of the transnational orienta-
tion of migrant organizations. The emergence of co-development schemes, and the
funding opportunities derived from them, has influenced migrant organizations in
two ways. First, it has led to a reorientation of the objectives of migrant organiza-
tions, resulting in an increase in the number of migrant organizations that focus on
development activities within the realm of international development cooperation.
Examples of countries where this is observed are France (Lacroix and Dumont
2012), Spain (Cebolla Boado and López-Sala 2012), and the Netherlands (Nijenhuis
and Zoomers 2015).
Second, co-development schemes have resulted in the establishment of new
migrant organizations that focus almost exclusively on development-oriented activ-
ities. Nijenhuis and Zoomers (ibid.) mention the establishment by Ghanaian
migrants of several new migrants organizations in the Netherlands. The greater
availability of funding has enabled these organizations to become professional
development NGOs. A number of new Moroccan organizations have emerged since
2000. These organizations are dedicated solely to development activities in
Morocco, and the availability of co-development funds (from the Dutch govern-
ment) was an important incentive for their establishment (ibid.).
The policies of origin countries have also contributed to change the roles of
migrant organizations. According to Godin and colleagues (2012), country-of-origin
policies (Morocco in this case) play an important role in enabling associations of
migrants (in Belgium) to gain funding. Although funds coming from the Moroccan
government through the “Moroccan Citizens from Abroad” association were limited
in absolute terms, they served to increase the political and symbolic legitimacy of
these organizations and thus enhanced transnational development activities.

Transnational Activities by Migrant Organizations:

What Difference Do They Make?

With the increasing prominence of the migration and development framework,

assessments of the transnational activities of migrant organizations seem to be nar-
rowing to a somewhat output-oriented and normative interpretation of “develop-
ment”, expressed in quantitative terms (e.g., the amount of money remitted, the
number of schools built, or the number of laptops shipped). In this framework,
migrant organizations are reduced to a tool for development—one that
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 139

policymakers are increasingly encouraged to use. The overall picture, according to

this view on development, is that the transnational activities of migrant organiza-
tions remain relatively small in scale and focused mainly on infrastructural projects
in the social sectors (e.g., construction of a health post or school or the improvement
of a village square) (Sinatti and Horst 2014; Portes et al. 2007; Nijenhuis and
Zoomers 2015). Much of the academic literature takes a broader perspective, ana-
lysing the role of migrant organizations while also paying attention to other dimen-
sions of development (e.g., political and social).
It is evident that the transnational activities of migrant organizations do affect the
local context in the country of origin. They change this local context and also affect
the relationship between the state and civil society. First, when implementing infra-
structural projects, migrant organizations seek the consent of local authorities,
which are not always willing or able to provide such support. Second, migrant orga-
nizations may initiate a discussion about the relationship between the state and civil
society. Some organizations are rather critical about the role of the state, as shown
by Fox and Bada (2008), who studied Mexican hometown associations in the
USA. These associations blamed local governments in villages of origin for failing
to provide necessary basic services to the local population. These migrant associa-
tions claimed a voice in municipal investments, as their collective investments had
freed up part of the municipal budget, which could then be allocated to other
investments.
Studies on the impact of the transnational activities of migrant organizations in
destination countries are scarce. A few observations can be made, though, in par-
ticular on the relationship between transnational activities and integration. First,
implementing transnational activities in the country of origin provides migrants
who are not fully integrated in the host society a “refuge”, that is, access to a social
environment linked to their own culture and identity (Marini 2014). Second, through
transnational activities, members of the organization get to know one another and
exchange information and knowledge, which supports integration among those
recently arrived. Third, the transnational activities of migrant organizations often
depend on the support of other stakeholders, such as private organizations, public
sector entities, and other migrant organizations. This collaboration could have
leveraging effects, for example, increasing access to information and networks. This
might foster social cohesion (JMDI 2010) and increase opportunities for collabora-
tion in other policy fields (Marini 2014; Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011).
The direction in which migrants’ collective transnational activities will develop
further is rather uncertain. It is likely that not only the orientation of transnational
activities of migrant organization will change, but so too will the intensity of these
activities, due to the emergence of a second and even third generation and increased
integration. Second and third generations might no longer be supportive of transna-
tional initiatives in the country of origin, an issue mentioned by various authors
(Nijenhuis and Zoomers 2015; Lacroix 2010a, b). Young people who were not born
in their parents’ country of origin may not share their parents’ feelings of belonging
to that specific locality. As a result, they might be disinclined to engage in transna-
tional activities oriented towards their parents’ birthplace. Another hypothesis is
140 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

that they will retain a feeling of connection to their country of origin, but not to the
specific locality their parents originated from. In that case, we could expect to see a
decrease in specific translocal activities in favour of transnational activities in the
country of origin, or in other developing countries. Moreover, younger generations
may not feel connected to or represented by organizations established by their par-
ents’ generation (Open Society Foundations 2014). The extent to which migrants
are embedded in the country of destination is important too. If migrants over the
course of time integrate and spread geographically within the destination country,
the rationale to be a member of a hometown association decreases, as Henry and
Mohan (2003, 618) found in their study on Ghanaian migrant organizations in
Milton Keynes (UK).

Conclusion

This chapter has examined translocal relationships at the meso level, in particular,
those linking local governments and migrant organizations in the country of desti-
nation with those in the country of origin. Our review shows that both types of link-
ages produce a gamut of activities, from knowledge exchange through municipal
partnerships to the subsidizing of migrant civic organizations, provision of charity
goods, and lobbying for migrant rights.
A few observations can be made regarding the main characteristics of these
activities. First, translocal activities by migrant organizations are sometimes funded
by local governments, and municipal partnerships with countries of origin are
sometimes mediated by migrant organizations. Second, translocal activities are usu-
ally initiated by local governments and migrant organizations in countries of desti-
nation. Third, translocal activities are generally not the core business of local
governments and migrant organizations; their focus is typically on the migrant des-
tination country.
This raises the question why actors at the meso level engage in translocal activi-
ties. Our analysis found that the desire to strengthen social cohesion and stimulate
integration at the local level is usually the main driver for local governments. Local
governments start partnerships with cities in countries of origin or support initia-
tives of migrant organizations in their own municipalities mainly because they
expect to reap added value from connecting their integration policies to interna-
tional cooperation. In addition, they are involved in processes aiming at strengthen-
ing local governance in partner municipalities. For migrant organizations, the
picture is more diffuse, with a mixture of moral obligations, political and economic
objectives, and philanthropy as central features.
Additionally, local government partnerships between migrant origin and destina-
tion countries suggest an equal relationship, having a two-way character, with
potential benefits for both parties. Such an explicit two-way character is often absent
from local governments’ support to translocal activities by migrant organizations
and initiatives of migrant organizations.
8 Translocal Activities of Local Governments and Migrant Organizations 141

From an economic perspective, the development impact of activities is relatively

limited, as they are relatively small in scale and mainly related to social infrastruc-
ture, such as the construction of schools or the provision of hospital equipment (by
migrant organizations), or waste management and public safety (by local govern-
ments). More important, however, is the impact these linkages have on other dimen-
sions of development, like the relationship between the state and civil society. This
applies to both municipal partnerships and the initiatives of migrant organizations.
Examples include the effect of municipal partnerships in improving the interface
between local government and civil society actors in countries of origin and the
results of lobbying by a migrant organization for an improved position of women in
the country of origin. Moreover, our review of the literature suggests a positive
relationship between translocal activities at the meso level and integration in the
country of destination.
Although the literature is sparse on strengthening social cohesion through local
governments’ international activities, the available findings confirm previous
research suggesting that engagement in international exchange programmes
enhances integration in the destination country. Similar effects can be observed for
the activities of migrant organizations, as translocal activities force them to become
active members of society in the country of destination. However, the relationship
between integration and transnational activities depends on the characteristics of
diasporas and policies and funding opportunities in the country of destination.
Moreover, the added value of these policies should not be overstated. Most synergy
between translocal activities and integration is created by activities that actively link
translocal efforts to the country of destination, for example, in multi-actor collabo-
rations, such as those encompassing migrant organizations, NGOs, and other civic
and public sector organizations (see also Marini 2014).
Adding to this, an interesting form of “three-way” integration is reported whereby
actors at the meso level in a country of origin play a role in supporting integration
processes in the country of destination. Moroccan municipalities, for instance,
dedicated their time and knowledge to stimulate the participation—political and
otherwise—of Moroccan migrants in Dutch municipalities.
Our review found that policies and funding opportunities are crucial elements.
Various national and local governments have implemented co-development policies
(accompanied by funding schemes) to support initiatives by migrant organizations
within the framework of migration and development. This has shifted the orienta-
tion of local governments and migrant organizations towards a more development-
oriented approach and triggered the emergence of new migrant organizations. The
emphasis on translocal activities from a migration and development perspective has
implications for the interpretation of these activities. To start with, policymakers
have tended to consider migrants and their organizations mainly as a “development
tool”, ignoring other, perhaps more important, roles. Moreover, from this perspec-
tive, development is often narrowed down to a rather output-oriented and normative
view focused on, for example, the size of collective investments or the number of
schools built, rather than on processes of social transformation (see also Sinatti and
Horst 2014). Finally, one might question the motives underlying this framework.
142 E. van Ewijk and G. Nijenhuis

Some municipalities, for instance, have had controversial objectives like encourag-
ing remigration. Questions could also be asked about the way initiatives are set up,
executed, and assessed.
The economic crisis and resulting budget cuts in Western Europe since 2008 has
put co-development programmes under pressure, threatening along with them some
migrant organizations’ funding for translocal activities. Funding constraints have
also affected the activities of local governments in origin countries, as all levels of
government have had to slash budgets. Nationally funded support programmes have
been phased out, which has had an impact at the local level (Van Ewijk 2013).
According to Van Ewijk (ibid.), linking to countries of origin remains on the agen-
das of those local governments that have already established linkages, but financial
resources dedicated to these partnerships have been reduced, and government actors
are playing a less intensive role, creating more room for civil society to step in.
Some local governments have shifted their international cooperation focus to eco-
nomic objectives and increasingly focus on partnerships with cities in emerging
economies like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). As
such, the transnational linkages of local governments and migrant organizations
represent a highly dynamic form of relationship between countries of destination
and countries of origin.

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Chapter 9
Sending Country Policies

Eva Østergaard-Nielsen

Introduction

Migrant origin countries have come to play an increasingly important role in

research on processes of migration, migrant belonging, and migrant settlement.
Especially since the late 1990s, sending countries have moved from a somewhat
marginal position to a more central place in migration studies. During this period,
the field of migration studies has seen a growth in single case research and compara-
tive analyses of sending country perceptions and policies towards their emigrants
and diasporas. This trend accompanies an empirical development wherein more and
more countries of origin seek to strengthen relations with their emigrant populations
by facilitating emigrant return, providing overseas consular assistance, and inviting
emigrant economic and political engagement from afar. Furthermore, the emergent
transnational optic in migration studies has encouraged researchers to consider the
interests and politics of the country of origin in analyses of migration flows, migrant
settlement, and transnational practices.
Studies of sending countries highlight the growing power of sending states in the
context of globalization and transnational migration. When reaching out to their
emigrant populations, sending countries have tried to shape processes of migration
and migrant transnational practices (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Levitt and De la
Dehesa 2003; Chin and Smith 2014; Guarnizo 1998). Indeed, sending country out-
reach policies aimed at bonding with and facilitating long-distance engagement of
diasporas have been depicted as a process of redefining the state and its borders
(Levitt and De la Dehesa 2003; Mügge 2012a; Chin and Smith 2014). Two issues
are worth highlighting in this regard. First, this phenomenon is not entirely new, as
noted by much of the literature. States have long catered to and invited the support

E. Østergaard-Nielsen (*)
Department of Political Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 147

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_9
148 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

of their expatriate populations through consular services and strategically placed

chambers of commerce. What is arguably different today is the scale and intensity
of these outreach policies and initiatives (R. C. Smith 2003b). Second, sending
country policies towards emigrants may intersect with migration and migrant incor-
poration policies in countries of residence. This renders the interests and policy-
making of receiving states an important factor for understanding the potential and
limits of sending country policies towards their emigrant populations.
Sending countries do not reach out to their emigrants in equal measure. The vari-
ance in outreach policies is interesting because any analysis of these issues needs to
confront the transnational political agency of migrants and states within broader
national and international political developments and structures. This chapter
explores the twin central questions of how and why countries of origin reach out to
their expatriate populations, focusing mainly on studies related to Europe. It first
outlines some basic concepts and typologies of sending country policies with a
particular emphasis on some of the key countries of origin of migrants settled within
the European Union (EU). It subsequently reviews some of the core explanations
for the emergence of sending country policies. Finally, it discusses the impact of
sending country policies on migrant settlement from the perspective of political
authorities in countries of residence.
In so doing, this analysis addresses a research field that spans all social science
disciplines, and consequently a wide range of methodologies. Research on sending
countries is still dominated by single case studies and comparisons focused within
a particular region. European-based research has centred on the countries of origin
of the larger migrant collectives from outside of the EU, such as Turkey (Østergaard-
Nielsen 2009, 2003c; Mügge 2012b) and Morocco (De Haas 2007; Brand 2002), or
on the Eastern European countries that recently became EU members (Waterbury
2006). Of course, there are also studies on Latin American sending country policies,
such as those of Ecuador (Boccagni 2014; Maisonave 2011), Bolivia and Mexico
(Lafleur 2012), and Argentina and Uruguay (Margheritis 2014), as well as Asia
(China) (Pieke et al. 2004). Recently, several studies have attempted a broad cross-
regional comparison in order to evaluate some of the core assumptions often made
regarding why sending states reach out to their populations (Ragazzi 2014; Gamlen
et al. 2013; Gamlen 2008).
It should be noted that two of the central terms within this literature are not
straightforward to use. First, the term ‘sending state’ or ‘sending country’ implies
that these countries or states actively send or export their emigrants, which is often
not the case. Alternative concepts include ‘emigration countries’, ‘emigration
states’ (Gamlen 2008), and ‘emigration nations’ (Collyer 2014), but they appear
less in the literature. Second, the frequently used term ‘diaspora engagement poli-
cies’ includes the word diaspora, the definition and significance of which is the
object of a long-standing debate. Despite these reservations, this chapter follows the
general trend of using the terms ‘sending country’ or ‘sending state’. It refers to
expatriate populations as both diasporas and emigrants. In any case, it is worth
emphasizing that most countries are not either countries of origin or reception, but
experience both types of flows.
9 Sending Country Policies 149

Mapping the Outreach Policies of Countries of Origin

The history of state-sponsored attention to emigrants and expatriates is as long as

the history of consular services. The introductory note to the Vienna Convention on
Consular Relations traces consular activities back to ancient Greece and the Italian
city-state of Genoa, where specially appointed notables residing abroad looked out
for merchants and citizens in their locality.1 The growth in consular institutions fol-
lowed globalization and intensification of foreign trade and migration. Especially
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, consulates added the tasks of protect-
ing and servicing citizens residing temporarily or permanently abroad to their work
on promoting trade-relations. Today when we talk about sending country policies,
the scope of institutions and policies involved is much more diverse. The following
sections illustrate some of the broader categories of sending country policies as well
as their complexity.
One set of outreach policies of sending countries falls within the economic
domain and aims primarily at attracting the economic resources of the emigrants.
This type of policies has received attention not only from emigrant states but also
from all major international organizations involved in migration policies. In particu-
lar, the topic of remittances has been central in the renewed policy debate on migra-
tion and development. Certainly, the sums involved are substantial and on the
increase. In 2013, global remittance flows were estimated at US $542 billion.2
Remittances are a welcome source of foreign income for the local, regional, and
national economy of the country of origin, but there is concern that those countries
where remittances constitute a substantial part of gross domestic product (GDP) are
vulnerable to fluctuations in remittance inflows. Consequently, there is no shortage
of sending country policies aimed at encouraging and facilitating remittances. For
instance, sending countries may facilitate special banking arrangements that make
remittance transfers easy and more affordable. Some countries, such as India, have
tried to attract foreign investment from diasporas by issuing special government
bonds (Lall 2003). There are also examples of sending countries granting tax
exemptions and fiscal advantages to non-resident citizen investors or to business
ventures of return migrants, as is the case in Ecuador and Senegal. Another example
is to allow return migrants to buy property otherwise off-limits to foreigners and to
ease taxation of second residences in the country of origin, as in the case of India
and the Philippines (Aguinas and Newland 2012). Other initiatives to encourage
emigrant spending in the country of origin include the promotion of emigrant tour-
ism. Through special offers, Morocco encourages generous holiday spending among
its up to one million citizens who return for holidays each summer (De Haas 2007).
In the Philippines, advertisements in the mass media encourage migrant parents to
purchase gifts for their family at home (Alcid 2003).

1
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, Vienna, 24 April 1963, Introductory note, http://legal.
un.org/avl/ha/vccr/vccr.html, accessed 18/4 2014.
2
World Bank, Migration and Remittances, April 2014, at http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/exter-
nal/news/0,,contentmdk:20648762 ~ pagepk:64257043 ~ pipk:437376 ~ thesitepk:4607,00.html
(accessed April 2014).
150 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

Some policies aim more directly at creating or reinforcing synergies between

migration and development. An often-cited example is the policy of attracting col-
lective remittances dedicated to development projects in migrants’ hometowns.
Mexico is famous for its “three for one” programmes, in which the three levels of
government (municipal, state, and federal) match the amount of money donated by
hometown associations to development projects (Williams 2012). Sending coun-
tries may also seek to tap into diaspora business and scientific networks. These poli-
cies aim to reverse brain drain by encouraging emigrant scientists to return to their
country of origin, as in the case of Italy, or to lead joint academic networks from
afar, as in the case of Morocco (Aguinas and Newland 2012).
A second set of sending countries policies falls within the political domain. These
can be categorized as an extension of political rights to non-resident nationals or
attempts to influence and control expat political activities abroad. In terms of the
extension of political rights, sending country governments may facilitate emigrants’
retention and passing on of their citizenship by reforming rules of citizenship acqui-
sition and loss, including dual citizenship (Jones-Correa 2001). Another trend is for
emigrant states to create an “emigrant citizenship” that gives more rights to non-
resident citizens than to other foreigners. The overseas citizenship of India, the
Pakistan Overseas Card, and the Turkish Pink Card (later replaced by the Blue Card)
are examples of identity cards granting a particular set of rights. These arrangements
do not usually include voting rights (Aguinas and Newland 2012; Mügge 2012b).
However, voting rights for non-resident citizens are on the increase. By 2007, no less
than 115 states granted long-distance voting rights in homeland elections to non-
resident citizens (Ellis et al. 2007). These rights come in a variety of forms. The most
inclusive allow all citizens to vote in all elections (legislative, local, and presiden-
tial), via personal, postal, or Internet voting procedures and with no prior registration
required before each election (Lafleur 2012; Collyer 2014; Bauböck 2007). A major
distinction is between those electoral systems where emigrants can elect their own
representatives and are accordingly divided into external districts and those electoral
systems where the emigrant vote is counted in an electoral district in the homeland.
Only 13 countries currently allow their non-resident citizens to elect their own can-
didates. Of these, five are EU member states (Croatia, Romania, Portugal, Italy, and
France) and eight are not (Algeria, Cape Verde, Columbia, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Macedonia, Mozambique, and Tunisia) (Collyer 2014).
Political rights can also take the form of councils established for dialogue with
emigrants. A number of emigration countries with significant populations of citi-
zens residing within the EU have such councils. For instance, Turkey set up an
advisory board from 1997 to 2000 that included 45 Turkish citizens residing abroad
as well as representatives of political parties and the state minister responsible for
Turks abroad (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003c). Morocco established its Council for the
Moroccan Community Abroad in 2007, with Moroccan emigrants being appointed
by the Palace (De Haas 2007; Østergaard-Nielsen 2012). Yet, these councils cannot
be considered a univocal success in terms of allowing emigrants a voice in diaspora
engagement policies. The representativeness of the councils was criticized by
migrant associations in both cases (Østergaard-Nielsen 2012, 2003b).
9 Sending Country Policies 151

In terms of sending country policies aimed at influencing and controlling emi-

grant political activities abroad, studies have revealed that sending countries may
seek to convey a particular political agenda and to build an emigrant lobby in their
favour. This may be done through consulates or by funding cultural institutions or
emigrant associations, or simply by communications via various types of media.
This strategy is especially pertinent when a sizeable and visible emigrant group
resides in a country that is important to the country of origin, as is the case of
Mexicans in the USA and Turkish citizens in Germany. For instance, the Turkish
state actively sought to mobilize Turkish citizens in protest against the recognition
of the Armenian Genocide and in favour of Turkey’s EU membership (Østergaard-
Nielsen 2009). This strategy of “courting the diaspora” is a departure from the more
defensive tactic of policing the diaspora and trying to curb dissidence abroad
through withdrawal of citizenship or the consular control of migrant associations
(Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; De Haas 2007).
A third set of policies falls within the domain of welfare and social rights.
Sending country governments may respond to emigrant calls for assistance by
extending welfare provisions to non-resident citizens. For instance, Spain extends
pensions to Spanish citizens abroad, and some regional governments allow emi-
grants access to health services when home on holidays (Østergaard-Nielsen and
Ciornei 2013). Some of the sending countries with the largest numbers of nationals
residing within the EU have negotiated bilateral social security agreements covering
their citizens abroad. As such, Turkey and Morocco have secured full portability of
benefits for, respectively, 68 % and 89 % of their workers abroad (Avato et al. 2010).
Social security cooperation between countries of residence has also taken place
within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP). Indeed, recent research has
counted 594 bilateral or multilateral social security agreements between EU mem-
ber states and countries outside of the EU (ibid.).
A related area is the cultural and religious domain, in which sending countries
sponsor and facilitate a range of services to emigrants and their descendants. Some
states offer educational programmes for emigrant descendants. This might be in the
form of partial or complete funding for schools abroad. Both Italy and France have
extensive networks of public schools in cities with larger concentrations of emi-
grants. In other cases, sending country governments may sponsor after-school
classes. The Turkish government and ministry of education, for example, organize
classes in Turkish language, history, and culture for emigrant descendants
(Østergaard-Nielsen 2003c).
Sending countries may also facilitate religious services for their citizens abroad.
This is especially relevant for emigrants residing in countries where their religion is
a minority. In these situations, sending countries have sponsored the presence of
religious leaders and places of worship. For instance, in the wake of labour emigra-
tion, the Turkish Ministry for Religious Affairs supported establishment of religious
associations in places with large concentrations of Turkish emigrants. These
organizations have Turkish government-funded imams, a physical space for reli-
gious practices, and infrastructure for potentially complicated issues, such as funer-
als in the country of origin (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003c). Morocco, too, facilitates
152 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

religious services for its citizens abroad. For instance, 176 imams were dispatched
to Europe during Ramadan in 2008 (Østergaard-Nielsen 2012).
Since sending country outreach policies may span different policy aims and min-
istries, some sending countries have undertaken significant ministerial or consular
reforms (Table 9.1). This entails creation of special ministries or departments for
emigrants to strengthen the overall coordination of emigrant policies. A recent
report identified 22 ministries and 17 subministry-level offices for diasporas in a
sample of 77 sending countries (Aguinas and Newland 2012). In the case of Ecuador,
the establishment of the National Secretary for the Migrant (SENAMI), originally
with an emigrant returning from the USA at the helm, is a case in point. SENAMI
was set up to identify needs for Ecuadorian intervention, to promote emigrant liveli-
hoods within the “Fifth Region”, thus sending a strong message of government
support to nationals overseas (Boccagni 2011). Indeed, the creation of such national-

Table 9.1 Examples of sending country policies

Category Dimensions
Economic domain Facilitating transfer of remittances through discounts on bank
transfers
Investment policies, e.g., special government bonds for diaspora
investors
Tax exemptions and fiscal advantages to attract expat investment
National, regional, and local government programmes to match
funding provided by emigrants for development-oriented projects
in their hometowns
Property rights allowing emigrants and expatriates to buy land
that is otherwise not available to non-residents. Easing
of taxation on property for non-resident citizens
Encouraging business and scientific networks
Political domain: Dual citizenship policies
Extending political rights External voting rights
Setting up platforms for consultative dialogue, such as councils
of emigrants
Political domain: Encouraging lobbying for country of origin interests in country
Influencing political of residence
activities abroad
Social domain Welfare provisions, extending social security (pension, access to
healthcare during holidays) to emigrants
Bilateral agreements on social rights with countries of residence
Religious and cultural Sponsoring religious institutions or personnel abroad
domain Funding cultural centres abroad
Government-sponsored schools abroad
Broadcasting of national media abroad
Other policies of Including diaspora in national calendar of celebrations
recognition Diaspora conferences
Honouring expats with awards
Source: Based on especially Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Ragazzi 2014; Levitt and De la Dehesa
2003; Gamlen 2008; Aguinas and Newland 2012
9 Sending Country Policies 153

level institutions has been interpreted as sending a message to emigrants that their
plight is being taken seriously (Levitt and De la Dehesa 2003).
Other initiatives aim more directly at strengthening real and symbolic ties with
emigrants and diasporas. “Diaspora conferences”, have been organized by Armenia,
Cyprus, and Turkey to create and strengthen networks and loyalty among emigrant
notables (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a). Some countries hold festivals, such as the
Gathering in Ireland (Collyer 2013), have an institutionalized “day of the diaspora”,
or honour emigrants with awards (Gamlen 2008; Ragazzi 2014).
It is worth highlighting that these policies refer only to state-sponsored initia-
tives, leaving aside the outreach and mobilization of other actors from the country
of origin, such as political parties, religious organizations, and charity or develop-
ment foundations. Moreover, the focus on government policies bypasses the impor-
tant aspect of government rhetoric towards emigrants. Several studies note that
policy measures are often preceded or accompanied by a shift towards a more cel-
ebratory discourse regarding emigrants (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Levitt and De
la Dehesa 2003; Collyer 2013; Smith 2008). The long and complex list of sending
country policies includes not only policies that encourage emigrants to support their
country of origin but also some policies aimed at improving migrants’ livelihoods
in their countries of residence, such as by extending social rights. Moreover, send-
ing country government leaders may call for stronger protection of their workers
abroad in terms of labour market conditions and anti-discrimination policies. For
instance, during the Ecuadorian electoral campaign in 2006, presidential candidate
Rafael Correa lamented that emigrants were ‘the biggest victims of the long neolib-
eral night, but also the biggest heroes’ and promised that ‘never again will the pro-
tagonists of the big national disaster called emigration be abandoned’. Consequently
his electoral programme included a range of social assistance measures and
protection of workers abroad.3 However, many of these topics fell outside the bilat-
eral agreements between Ecuador and the countries of residence of Ecuadorian emi-
grants. Rather, this level of protection of workers abroad falls within the receiving
country’s political jurisdiction. In such cases, the sending country’s scope of action
is limited and subject to approval of and agreement with the receiving state.

Explaining Sending Country Policies: Transnational Interests,

National Politics, and the International Diffusion of Ideas

The twin questions of what motivates emigrant countries to formulate and imple-
ment outreach policies and why sending country policies tend to differ or converge
have been approached in a number of ways. Again, it is worth noting that most of

3
http://ecuadorinmediato.com/index.php?module = Noticias&func = news_user_
view&id = 39940&umt = rafael_correa_lanza_propuesta_para_emigrantes_ecuatorianos and
http://elpais.com/diario/2007/10/21/espana/1192917613_850215.html (accessed April 2014,
translation of author).
154 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

this literature is based on single case or country studies. These studies provide a
good contextualized understanding of the perceptions and processes leading to out-
reach policies, but they fail to test hypotheses systematically across a larger number
of cases. Moreover, the first wave of studies of migrant transnationalism exhibited a
tendency to sample on the dependent variable (Portes 2001). This extends to the
analysis of sending country policies as well, since few studies have included emi-
gration countries with little or no political or administrative attention to emigrants
(Mügge 2012a). Finally, studies do not necessarily operate with the same dependent
variable. Comparative analyses of sending country policies have tended to focus on
only one set of outreach policies, such as political rights, without positioning them
within the wider context of policies towards emigrants (Ragazzi 2014). Yet, differ-
ent sets of policies may derive from different motivations, rendering the findings
from one policy field less applicable to another.
A first step towards understanding sending country policies is to elaborate a
typology of sending countries based on the scope and intensity of a broad range of
outreach policies. A basic categorization is between states that do reach out to emi-
grants, such as Italy, and those that do not, such as Denmark. In addition to this
distinction between engaged and disengaged states, there is a category of “strategi-
cally selective states”, which encourage emigrants to stay in touch but extend to
them only a subset of rights and services (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). Some
studies have based their classification on the motives underlying policies. For
instance, Gamlen (2008) builds a classification on the distinction between diaspora
creating and diaspora integrating policy mechanisms, concluding that those states
that employ one set of policies but not the other are emigration states “on paper” or
in an incoherent way (ibid.). In a somewhat similar vein, studies of sending coun-
tries have employed notions of governance, or the Foucauldian notion of “govern-
mentality”, as the dependent variable, identifying types and forms of extraterritorial
sending country policies aimed at creating, mobilizing, or controlling emigrant
populations from afar (Délano and Gamlen 2014; Gamlen 2008; Maisonave 2011).
Recent analyses base their classification of sending country policies on the dif-
ferent configurations of policies. This results in a classification that distinguishes
not only between the disinterested and engaged states, but also between the expatri-
ate state (which directs cultural and educational policies at high-income expats who
reside temporarily abroad) and the managed labour state (which maintains policies
to attract remittances and extend welfare provisions to lower income emigrant
workers) (Ragazzi 2014). The distinction between policies directed at migrants per-
ceived as temporarily abroad and those considered permanent expatriates is impor-
tant and echoes the classification of R. C. Smith (2003b) between emigrant policies
and global nation policies. There is a key difference between those countries that
primarily want to facilitate labour export and those that aim mainly to keep in touch
with overseas nationals and their descendants. Both sets of countries may be inter-
ested in keeping remittances flowing, but the existence of a broader set of “bonding”
policies is more likely among the latter.
When it comes to explaining why states reach out to their emigrant populations,
the literature points to a broad range of historical and (geo) political variables that
9 Sending Country Policies 155

account for differences in emigrant state policies. Recent studies group the
explanations according to research area, such as migration and development, trans-
nationalism, and citizenship or governance (Collyer 2013; Délano and Gamlen
2014). Others focus on overall conceptual approach, distinguishing between interest
maximization, national ideologies, traditions of governance, and policy diffusion
(Ragazzi 2014; Gamlen et al. 2013; Délano 2013). The sections below build on
these distinctions, though the main variables and hypotheses are grouped in a
slightly different way according to the weight and significance placed on transna-
tional and domestic actors, interests, and types of processes. The first section dis-
cusses the understanding of sending country policies as an outcome of the different
configurations of interests and power in transnational state–emigrant relations. The
second section focuses on an analysis of sending country policies as a result of
political processes within the countries of origin, such as broader democratization,
national identity, and partisan policy interests. Finally, the last sections discuss the
conceptualizations of sending country policies as being shaped by processes of
policy diffusion at the global, regional, or even bilateral level. These approaches
emphasize different sending country policies. Yet, all of them seek to link a specific
set of actors, interests, or processes with the broader scope and level of sending
country outreach policies.

Transnational Relations as an Outcome of the Balance

of Interests and Power between Sending Countries
and Diasporas

A dominant trend in research has been to view sending state policies as an outcome
of the balance of interests and power between sending countries and diasporas.
From this perspective, sending states reach out to their diasporas in recognition of
the economic and political contributions that emigrants might make via remittances,
foreign direct investment, or political support (Sheffer 1986; Bauböck 2003;
Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Guarnizo 1998). Consequently, sending country out-
reach policies constitute a particularly attractive strategy for states that occupy a
marginal position in the global economic and political system (Guarnizo 1998). For
these countries, diaspora engagement policies are, so to speak, a foot in the door to
the economic benefits of globalization. Other analyses emphasize the political sig-
nificance of diasporas, in particular, when a sizeable proportion of the sending
country’s population resides in a receiving country or region important for its for-
eign policy or when a dissident voice is unwanted by the homeland.
Thus, one overall hypothesis of why countries reach out to their diasporas is
based on a rational cost-benefit analysis by the political elite of the sending country;
that is, the more important the diaspora is for the economy and domestic and foreign
policy of the country of origin, the more likely that country is to seek to “tap into”
diaspora resources through outreach policies. This might be with policies aimed
directly at maximizing remittance flows or via broader policy reforms to encourage
156 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

the continued loyalty of the diaspora. Indeed, the role of remittances is given
significant weight in this strand of analysis as outreach policies are seen as ‘part of
a broader effort to attract or channel migrant remittances’ (Levitt and De la Dehesa
2003, 595). Similarly, Waterbury (2006) argues that some emigrant states reach out
to their diasporas residing in countries with assimilatory migrant incorporation
regimes in order to retain loyalty and keep remittances flowing.
The notion of diaspora engagement policies as the outcome of a cost-benefit
analysis related to the economic and political strength of sending countries’ over-
seas nationals is straightforward but ultimately fails to offer a comprehensive ana-
lytical framework. First, it does not explain why some of the countries most
dependent on migrant remittances have not implemented the most comprehensive
sending country policies. Arguably, the answer could be that those countries that
already receive a large and steady flow of remittances need not do anything further
to attract such funds, except keep facilitating labour export. Second, it does not
explain why a variety of countries that are not dependent on emigrant economic and
political support have reached out to their emigrants, as have Spain, Italy, and
France.
Moreover, emigrants and diasporas are not passive entities merely waiting for
their country of origin to approach them. Another notion is that of sending country
outreach policies being a response to demand from an organized and powerful dias-
pora (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a). Such demands from a diaspora may be backed by
the expatriates’ economic and political strength. The role of the Armenian diaspora
in the first set of Armenian outreach policies after independence is a case in point
(Panossian 2003). However, this perspective does not view outreach policies as
stemming from a dictate from the diaspora. Instead it highlights the domestic poli-
tics of the country of origin, as diaspora demands and potential support enter power
struggles among main political actors in the country of origin.

The Politics of the State and Nation

Most analysis has drawn on the domestic political situation in the country of origin
to explain why sending countries reach out to their emigrants. One argument is that
the degree of democratization and political competition in the homeland determine
the extent to which this competition spills over into the transnational realm. To
illustrate, during processes of democratization and increased political competition,
political parties may vie for the diaspora’s support. For instance, political parties
believing themselves to have support among emigrants might push for the extension
of dual citizenship and political rights, as happened in Mexico and the Dominican
Republic (M. P. Smith 2003a; Itzigsohn 2014; Rhodes and Harutyunyan 2010). This
argument is complicated by the fact that some emigrant states, albeit democratic,
tend to largely ignore their emigrants; and emigrant states that are not democracies,
or at least not experiencing a linear process of democratization or political liberal-
ization, have been known to reach out to their emigrant populations. In the case of
9 Sending Country Policies 157

the latter, the desire for extra-territorial control of citizens and civil society has been
identified as a core incentive (R. C. Smith 2003b; Østergaard-Nielsen 2012).
Outreach policies under Mussolini’s fascist regime were considered part of an over-
all strategy to keep dissident mobilization in check (R. C. Smith 2003b; Lafleur
2012). With these policies, Italy extended a range of political rights (including state-
sponsored return tickets to vote in homeland elections) and social and cultural rights
(e.g., Italian schools abroad and the organization of emigrant associations).
A second line of argument suggests that sending state outreach policies are
shaped by forms of nationhood and processes of nation-building in the country of
origin (Boccagni 2014). This view is especially related to the extension of citizen-
ship to overseas nationals. One hypothesis in this regard is that an understanding of
the nation based on ethnic rather than territorial criteria would render emigration
states more likely to reach out to and include their nationals abroad in what has been
termed a process of re-ethnicization of citizenship (Joppke 2003). Such a path-
dependent approach to understanding policy outcomes as dependent on types of
civic or ethnic national models of citizenship has, however, been criticized as unable
to explain why states shift their policies towards emigrants (and immigrants). As
argued by Bauböck (2013, xv), we should see understandings of nationhood not as
independent variables but as ‘discourses through which states legitimate their poli-
cies that may be driven by quite different motives’. Indeed, a more constructivist
approach to the complex relationship between homeland narratives of the nation
and those of emigrants has been highlighted in recent work on sending country poli-
cies (Collyer 2013; Boccagni 2014). It could be added that this type of research
requires an analysis that distinguishes which set of political actors in the sending
countries frames their support or opposition to outreach policies towards emigrants.
For instance, Joppke (2003) in an analysis of three EU member states—Spain,
France, and Italy—demonstrates that centre right to extreme right wing parties have
pushed for a more inclusive approach to emigrant citizenship while maintaining a
restrictive line towards immigrant naturalization criteria.
A further perspective pertaining to the political characteristics of the country of
origin emphasizes the type of political and economic governance (Ragazzi 2014;
Gamlen 2008; Gamlen et al. 2013). According to Ragazzi (2014), there is a relation-
ship between the political-economic model of a state and the development of state
policies. The more closed an economy is (in foreign trade and control of the finan-
cial system) the more closed its attitude towards emigrants will be. More open (neo-
liberal) states, will be more inclusive. In an analysis of 35 countries, Ragazzi (ibid.)
concludes that this best explains the development of diaspora policies.
A look at the politics underlying policies in countries of origin emphasizes that
these policies are also the product of domestic political power configurations,
including not only political parties but also interest organizations and emigrants in
their powerbase. Comparative studies examining the roles of these actors could fur-
ther clarify how emigrant policies relate back not just to the broader characteristics
of the political system but also to negotiation and contestation between the main
political actors in the country of origin.
158 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

Global Norms and the International Diffusion of Ideas

Another set of explanations of why sending countries reach out to their citizens
abroad positions emigrant and diaspora policies within processes of idea and norm
diffusion through international organizations (Levitt and De la Dehesa 2003; Rhodes
and Harutyunyan 2010), regional networks of states (Délano 2013), and even bilat-
eral exchanges of information (Iskander 2010). Norms are here understood as col-
lective understandings of appropriate behaviour (Guiraudon 2012). The basic idea
is that there is an evolution of norms of how sending country policies can optimize
the externalities of international migration. Formulation and implementation of
sending country policies take cues from this process of norm evolution. For instance,
the emergence of new international norms of nationhood and citizen protection has
been argued to influence emigrant state policies within the domain of citizenship
and political rights. States liberalize their citizenship policies in step with globaliza-
tion and adhere to more post-national or cosmopolitan notions of nationhood. Such
a deterritorialization of citizenship, coupled with a stronger commitment to human
rights norms, may arguably translate into more inclusive policies towards both
immigrants and emigrants (Joppke 2008; Rhodes and Harutyunyan 2010; Soysal
1994; Levitt and De la Dehesa 2003).
A broader set of outreach policies can be understood in the context of evolving
norms of global migration governance. Here, the role of emigrant countries in
recovering lost resources, especially in the policy fields of migration and develop-
ment, is lauded as a “best practice”, because it allows not just the migrant receiving
states but also emigrant states to partake in bilateral or multilateral cooperation on
migration issues (Gamlen et al. 2013). This view is reflected in the agenda and rec-
ommendations of the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) sponsored Handbook on Diaspora
Engagement, which provides ‘a user-friendly accessible and practical guide on the
state of the art in governmental diaspora initiatives…designed to help policy makers
and practitioners fit the many elements of diaspora policy into a coherent strategy’
(Aguinas and Newland 2012, 14). Indeed, there are strong indications that sending
states which move in the same international circles are picking up on this advice.
From 2000 to 2008, 20 % of all poverty reduction strategies published by develop-
ing states included a call for engaging expatriate communities (Gamlen et al. 2013).
In terms of the regional and national politics of policy diffusion, Délano (2013)
identifies a convergence of practices and policies of emigrant states in Latin America
as a result of dialogue and information sharing among Latin American govern-
ments. Three factors are identified as crucial to this process: the influence of the
Mexican example, the ideological convergence of Latin American governments,
and finally the fact that these countries largely share the same emigrant destination
country, the USA (ibid.). Iskander (2010) traces policy diffusion across regions,
demonstrating that Morocco and Mexico learned from each other (and the emi-
grants) through a creative process of policy innovation. The overall suggestion is
that domestic resistance to outreach policies among segments or all of the homeland
9 Sending Country Policies 159

political elite can be overcome with a consolidating example from another sending
country that has successfully implemented such policies (Délano 2013).
The perspective on norms and policy diffusion adds an interesting dimension to
our understanding of the complex interplay between processes within and beyond
the nation state. It highlights the fact that ideas travel and that international, regional,
and bilateral relationships matter (Délano 2013). Moreover, it calls for further anal-
yses of what domestic factors matter for the incorporation of international or region-
ally evolving norms of state-emigrant policies (Guiraudon 2012).
All in all, these different approaches place different emphases on different actors
and processes. Few would argue that emigration policies can be understood only
with reference to either the strength and potential of the emigrants, the political situ-
ation in the country of origin, or the diffusion of policy norms. Instead qualitative
studies have tended to look at the particular configuration of several or all of these
factors across a limited number of cases, and broader systematic statistical studies
have increasingly tested these different predictors in a particular policy area or a
broader set of policies. The study of relations between the sending country and its
emigrants has been criticized as being largely a-theoretical (Délano and Gamlen
2014). Yet, overall the field appears to have increasingly taken up the challenge of
developing theory on the roles of actors, norms, and processes at the national, trans-
national, and international level.

Perceptions of Sending Country Policies in Countries

of Residence

An important aspect of sending country policies aimed at reaching out to nationals

abroad is their impact on both the emigrants and the political authorities of the
country of residence. Indeed, the role of sending countries in the integration of their
citizens abroad is central to the European Commission’s “three way approach to
integration of third country nationals” (EC 2011, see Garcés-Mascareñas and
Penninx in this volume). The actual impact of sending country policies on the scope
and direction of migrant transnationality is still an evolving research field. There is
a growing body of literature on the nexus between migrant transnationality and
integration (see Mügge in this volume). Yet, there is still work to do regarding the
impact of sending country policies on both migrant transnationality and migrant
processes of settlement. Regarding migrant transnationality, it can be difficult to
determine to what extent emigrant state efforts to bond with their non-resident citi-
zens are directly responsible for migrant transnational practices related to their
country of origin. These practices are embedded in broader political and economic
processes as well. For instance, a recent report on remittances to Latin American
emigrant countries explains changes in remittance flows by labour market condi-
tions in the country of residence and by changing macroeconomic conditions in the
sending country, but without mentioning sending country policies aimed at
160 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

increasing these flows (Guiraudon 2012). Moreover, several cases suggest that emi-
grants respond only reluctantly to outreach policies of the homeland. Turnout in
homeland elections is a notorious case in point, as it is usually nowhere near domes-
tic electoral participatory rates, because the cost of voting in terms of both access to
information and the logistics of voter registration is rather high (Lafleur 2012).
Emigrants may in general be sceptical towards the outreach of a homeland regime,
since lack of trust in that very regime may have been an incentive for emigration in
the first place (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Boccagni 2014). Indeed, a recent hand-
book on bonding with the diaspora repeatedly emphasizes the importance of foster-
ing trust in the country of origin among emigrants and diasporas—an indication that
diasporas are not necessarily confident in the political institutions of their homeland
(Aguinas and Newland 2012).
Sending country policies may, more or less explicitly, try to link with processes
of migrant settlement. Overall, the strengthening of upward social mobility of emi-
grants in their country of residence is usually interpreted as a win-win scenario for
sending countries and emigrants, as wanting the best for your citizens abroad is not
incompatible with having a financially and politically significant expatriate lobby
abroad (Bauböck 2003; Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; R. C. Smith 2003b; Kirişci
2008). Still, emigrant state policies that aim to attract the attention and resources of
emigrants have been viewed with ambiguity by governments of countries of resi-
dence, particularly those with a more assimilatory migrant integration regime
(Østergaard-Nielsen 2009). Again there is little systematic research on how emi-
grant state policies are perceived in the receiving countries.
Within Europe, the idea of the sending country having a role to play in the inte-
gration of third country nationals, present in policy documents at the European
level, is somewhat ambiguous at the national level. Research indicates that there are,
very generally speaking, two quite opposite perceptions of the challenges posed and
opportunities offered by emigrant state outreach policies (Østergaard-Nielsen
2009). There is the perception that outreach policies pose a challenge to migrant
integration within the so-called “zero-sum” understanding of migrant loyalty; that
is, the more focused migrants are on their country of origin, the less they will iden-
tify with and support their country of residence. This perspective considers sending
country policies aimed explicitly at bonding with and tapping into the resources of
a migrant collective as counterproductive to policies of migrant incorporation in the
country of residence. More in tune with the policy vision of the European
Commission is recognition of the potential of emigrant state policies aiming to tap
the development potential of collaboration with emigrants and their associations.
The understanding here is that migrants, either through return or from afar, can be
important actors in local and national development dynamics in their countries of
origin.
In terms of the perceptions of how sending country outreach policies intersect
with migrant integration, some examples of sending country rhetoric related to
“don’t forget me” attitudes have been unpalatable to countries of residence. For
instance, during the 1980s, Turkish officials criticized German lack of dual citizen-
ship often in very strong terms, and consular staff berated Turkish emigrants for
9 Sending Country Policies 161

trading their Turkish passport for a German one (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003c;

Özdemir 1997). In a later development, Turkey provides an illustrative case of a
country of origin seeking to balance the desire to retain emigrant interest and loyalty
in their country of origin while encouraging them to integrate in their country of
residence. During the 2014 presidential electoral campaign, in which Turkish emi-
grants could vote for the first time, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan encouraged
them to learn the language of their country of residence and ‘not live like foreigners’
but also to preserve their mother tongue and cultural links to the homeland.4 This
message of “integration, but not assimilation” was, however, received with some
caution among German and Austrian political leaders wary of the impact of country
of origin leaders’ patriotic calls for loyalty.5
In terms of the policy field of migration and development, emigrant state policies
of bonding with their citizens abroad is considered “best practice” (Aguinas and
Newland 2012), and a growing number of policy initiatives have sought to strengthen
partnerships with sending countries in order to tap into migrant transnationality. An
example is the German aid agency, GIZ, which, among other things, has worked
with Serbian migrant associations in Germany to build stronger trust in the Serbian
financial sector, in order to strengthen flows of remittances and foreign direct invest-
ment (ibid.). The question is to what extent such instances of international coopera-
tion among sending and receiving countries, which focus on how public policy can
assist migrants in supporting their homeland, are matched by cooperation aimed at
strengthening the integration of migrants in their receiving countries.
One important dimension in this respect is the protection of emigrant labourers
in precarious work situations. As mentioned, sending countries have called for pro-
tection of their workers abroad. Ecuador’s government strongly criticized the
Spanish and Italian governments for this reason (Boccagni 2014). The Philippines,
too, has called for the protection of and proper salaries for especially domestic
workers in the Gulf and Asia, and has secured a minimum wage for Philippine
domestic workers in Malaysia (Ezquerra and Garcés-Mascareñas 2008). However,
in most cases sending country governments lack the power to follow up these calls
with any substantive policy measures. In this regard, sending country policies
appear to be limited by the sovereign right of receiving states to define labour mar-
ket conditions within their own borders (subject to international conventions) rein-
forced by the often very asymmetric power relations between sending and receiving
countries.

4
Turkish PM Erdoğan slams German media, calls for ‘integration’ but ‘no assimilation’ in Cologne,
in Hurriyet Daily news, May 24 2014, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-pm-erdogan-
slams-german-media-calls-for-integration-but-no-assimilation-in-cologne.aspx?PageID = 238&N
ID = 66901&NewsCatID = 510 (accessed July 2014).
5
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/19/us-austria-turkey-idUSKBN0EU1ZI20140619
(accessed July 2014)
162 E. Østergaard-Nielsen

Concluding Remarks

Sending countries have taken an important leap from eking out a largely marginal
existence to being recognized as a significant player in European-based (transna-
tional) migration research. The overall field of sending country policies includes a
complex and fairly comprehensive range of initiatives aimed at assisting and attract-
ing support from emigrants and diasporas. These policies are recognized as interest-
ing in and of themselves because they challenge the basic idea of congruence
between political communities and state borders. An increasingly methodologically
sophisticated analysis of especially single case studies and focused comparisons
and recently also comparative statistical analyses have highlighted a series of core
explanatory frameworks for understanding the motivations of sending countries for
reaching out to their emigrants.
Understanding the scope and rationale of sending country policies towards emi-
grants is an important and ongoing research field. There is still a challenging
research agenda ahead in terms of the transnational, national, and international poli-
tics of sending country policies. The policy field of migration and development
stimulates partnership and collaboration among countries of residence and origin
(and the migrants themselves). Yet, more studies are needed to understand the over-
all dynamics of how sending country outreach policies designed to keep or rekindle
a relationship with nationals abroad impact processes of settlement and how they
square with receiving country interests. In that respect, it is worth bearing in mind
that emigrants and diasporas may not immediately respond to sending countries’
outreach, because they are wary of the motives and credibility of these efforts and
the extent to which they are sensitive to emigrant needs. Moreover, we still need to
explore the extent to which European governments are moving away from the zero-
sum debate and the securitization optic on migrant transnationality to a more inte-
grated three-way approach as envisioned by the European Commission. Such a shift
may enable us to better understand the extent that sending country outreach policies
aimed at both bonding with and supporting citizens abroad challenge territorial
policy sovereignty and the strength of receiving countries in agenda-setting in inter-
national cooperation on migration and migrant settlement.

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9 Sending Country Policies 163

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Chapter 10
Migration and Development Framework
and Its Links to Integration

Russell King and Michael Collyer

Introduction

Both historically and still today, migration is driven by economics. One of

Ravenstein’s famous laws of migration went simply thus: ‘The major causes of
migration are economic’.1 Whilst it is true, in this late-modern era, that people
migrate for a greater diversity of reasons, including education, lifestyle, love, or a
warmer climate, the primacy of “economic migration” remains, not least in political
discourse and in discussions over how migration should be managed. In the UK, for
instance, the term “economic migrants”, said with emphasis on the “economic”, is
applied to people whose influx should be rigidly controlled, even suppressed, except
when there is an anticipated benefit to the economy, as in the aftermath of European
Union (EU) enlargement in 2004.2
This continuous stress on migration as a fundamentally economic process is an
enduring explanation of why most migration takes place (to escape poverty and
unemployment, to improve incomes and life-chances, etc.), but it says very little
about the effects of migration, especially on the countries, regions, and communities
of origin of the migrants, and on their family members left behind. The economic

1
Ravenstein’s original papers were published in 1885and 1889. For an accessible and sympathetic
critique see Grigg (1977).
2
After the 2004 enlargement, the UK, Ireland, and Sweden immediately opened their labour mar-
kets to the entry of workers from the ten accession countries. A much larger influx than expected
took place, especially of Poles to the UK and Ireland. Nevertheless, these labour migrants helped
to underpin the economic boom that lasted until the 2008 financial crisis. For an in-depth analysis
of this East–west development-inducing migration, see Black et al. (2010), Galgoczi et al. (2009),
and Glorius et al. (2013).
R. King (*) • M. Collyer
School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 167

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_10
168 R. King and M. Collyer

frame of reference, with its emphasis on (un)employment, incomes, and labour

markets, says even less about other important dimensions of migration, such as
migrants’ social integration in the host country and what this, in turn, might mean
for their relationship with their home country.
The connection between the succinct interpretation of integration set out by
Penninx and Garcés-Mascareñas in Chap. 2 of this volume (on the process of
becoming an accepted part of society) and the predominantly economic understand-
ing of migration and development is not always clear. One of our central arguments
in this chapter is that the overall approach to migration and development in both
applied and theoretical terms has fluctuated with different understandings of the
nature, forms, and processes of integration. We follow other theoretical overviews
of migration and development in characterizing this relationship as a swinging pen-
dulum (De Haas 2012; Gamlen 2014).
We first look at how the relationship between migration and development (hence-
forth M&D) has been seen theoretically, tracing how this analysis has swung
between positive and negative interpretations over the seven decades of the European
post-war era. Throughout this historical-theoretical treatment, we privilege three
processes as potential triggers of home-country development: remittances, return
migration, and diaspora involvement. We then broaden the dual conceptual lens of
M&D: we refocus migration and return as encompassing a diversity of transnational
mobilities; we reconceptualize development as being less about economic measures
and more about human wellbeing; and we broaden our analysis of remittances from
financial transfers to include social, cultural, and political elements. The final part
of the chapter aims at a synthesis between the M&D frame, on the one hand, and the
integration frame, on the other. Here, we ask two questions. First, how does the
multifaceted integration process impact on migrants’ capacity to stimulate develop-
ment in their home countries and communities? Second, for those migrants who
return-migrate or who lead multi-sited transnational lives, what are the challenges
to their reintegration in their countries of origin?

Theoretical Perspectives on the M&D Nexus

Any social scientist with a contemporary global perspective will surely agree that
the phenomenon of migration and the challenge of development are vigorously
debated topics. How do these two mega-processes interface with each other? We
start with definitions and move to theory. Bakewell (2012: xiv) contrasts ‘solid’
migration with ‘slippery’ development.
Migration is observable and measurable, despite the invisibility of clandestine
migration and the challenges of collecting good migration statistics. The global
stock of migrants—people residing in a country different from their birth country—
stands at 232 million, 3.3% of the world’s population of 7.2 billion (UN 2013). But
stock figures are static measures; they reflect the culmination of previous
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 169

migrations. Given that both migration and development are dynamic processes,
flows of migrants are often seen as the more relevant variable—either one-way or
net flows over a certain time span, such as a year or a decade. The notion of net
migration, intuitively attractive in the gravitational logic of economic push and pull
factors, is problematic, however, as it is the residual product of five types of migra-
tion flows: emigrants going out of a country, and those returning; immigrants com-
ing into a country, and those returning; and finally, transit migrants passing through.
Moreover, if migration is seen as the product of individual human decision-making
events, then it has to be pointed out that there is no such individual as a net migrant!
Fischer et al. (1997: 94–96) engage in a simple but interesting correlation analysis
between the “net stock” of migration for each country (the balance between that
country’s immigrants and its emigrants, expressed as a percentage of total popula-
tion) and the “dependant” variable of development (gross domestic product (GDP)
per capita measured in purchasing power parities). For the world as a whole, the
correlation is +0.46. Overall, then, the more immigrants the higher the GDP, and the
more emigration the lower the GDP.3
Compared to “solid” migration, the conceptualization and measurement of
development are contentious, with a diversity of perspectives. Bakewell (2012: xiv–
xvi) notes two older ideas of development. The first is the European Enlightenment
belief in the capacity of humanity to progress towards a stable and rational social
and economic order, which implies a duty of “advanced” countries to help and “civ-
ilize” the “unenlightened” parts of the world. In practice, this was no more than a
‘moral cover for colonial expansion’ (ibid.). Second, the mid-twentieth-century col-
lapse of colonial empires, combined with the Cold War, set the frame for an ideo-
logical battle between, on the one side, the West’s policy of “development” as
modernization and economic growth within the capitalist global order and, on the
other, the heterogeneous communist or socialist ideas about development espoused
by the Soviet bloc, China, Cuba, etc. We return to this ideological duel presently.
Over time, narrowly economic interpretations of development (i.e., economic
growth measured in trends in GDP per capita as the magical indicator) broadened to
a wider vision of human development. This is now well established (since 1990) in
the Human Development Index used in successive annual reports of the United
Nations Development Programme to synthesize, alongside per capita GDP, quality-
of-life variables like literacy, health, life expectancy, infant mortality, human rights,
and gender equality into composite indices. Such measures take their cue from
Sen’s (1999) pioneering work on reconceptualizing development as the capacity of
people to exercise autonomy and control over their lives.

3
The correlations are higher when the analysis is applied to groupings of countries linked by
regional immigration systems: +0.81 for Europe, Turkey, and the Maghreb and +0.73 for the
Americas (Fischer et al. 1997, 95).
170 R. King and M. Collyer

Migration Studies and Development Studies

Until relatively recently the two interdisciplinary fields of migration studies and
development studies remained separate: migration scholars said little about devel-
opment, and development specialists said little about migration. Policy debates like-
wise were kept largely separate. Some significant forays were made into the
interlinkages, at both the local-regional level (Abadan-Unat et al. 1976) and on a
more global scale (Skeldon 1997; Zelinsky 1971), but little attempt was made at
formal theorization of the relationship.
For most of the post-war period until the early 1990s, the predominant European
discourse focused on labour-market needs, “guest worker” immigration, and “integra-
tion”. There was almost no acknowledgement of migrants’ links to their home coun-
tries and their developmental impact there. There was, however, an implicit assumption
that migration would be beneficial to migrants’ home countries through savings and
remittances sent back, and through the innovative stimulus of return migration.
However, several studies carried out in various return-destination contexts in the 1970s
and 1980s found this return-development mechanism to be largely lacking.4 What was
clear then, and what has emerged with renewed clarity as a result of the westward
migration of Poles and other accession-country migrants since 2004, is the develop-
mental contribution of labour migration to the receiving country, the continued growth
of which was sustained and accelerated by extra supplies of flexible and willing labour.
Both the guest worker migration and the recent East–west migration vindicate Piore’s
(1979) thesis on the crucial role of migrant labour in fuelling growth in advanced
industrial economies. Indeed Castles and Kosack (1973, 8), in their classic treatise on
immigrant workers in Western Europe, go so far as to say that labour migration was a
form of development aid given by the poor to the rich countries of Europe.
The nature of the M&D debate changed around 2000, prompted by a constella-
tion of changing migration contexts, new policy initiatives, and an academic reap-
praisal of what came to be called the migration–development nexus (Van Hear and
Sørensen 2002). This substantial change can be framed in terms of the three distinct
levels set out in Chap. 2—individuals, organizations, and institutions—plus a fourth
factor, which is the theoretical shift in keeping with empirical findings and political
developments. First, at the individual and human-behaviour level, there was a clear
understanding that global migration accelerated, globalized, and diversified after
the 1980s, through the era that Castles and Miller (2008) refer to as the ‘Age of
Migration’. Beyond the classic “guest worker” origins in Southern Europe and the
Maghreb, migrants were now arriving in Europe from a far wider geographical
spread of source countries. The destinations in Europe shifted too, expanding from
the “first generation” of North-Western European receiving countries to include
new “second-generation” immigration countries (the southern EU countries plus
Ireland). This new immigration wave received fresh impetus after the fall of the Iron
Curtain and the subsequent eastward expansion of the EU.

4
See, amongst others, the results of the REMPLOD project in Turkey (Abadan-Unat et al. 1976),
research by Cerase (1974) and King et al. (1986) on Southern Italy, and by Rhodes (1978) on Spain.
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 171

Second, at the organizational level, there was recognition that the way migrants
are organized was significant. The various forms that migrant collectives took, par-
ticularly hometown associations, underlined the importance of forms of integration
in both the origin and the destination country. Portes’ (1998) notion of “globaliza-
tion from below” highlights the existence of grassroots networks of migrants, con-
nected transnationally. The effectiveness of these organizations was dependent on
their ability to “be accepted” as parts of two societies, as globally networked citi-
zens with access to key expertise in their countries of destination and as purveyors
of international financial support in their communities of origin (Lacroix 2005). In
many cases, the societies in which migrants were accepted were highly localized. At
the national level their presence was challenged in both origin and destination;
acceptance came in villages of origin and professional networks in destination
countries.
Third, at the institutional level, there were several new initiatives at the interna-
tional policy and political level. Countries of migrant origin were accepted as part-
ners or were drawn into debates on the international management of migration
through such arenas as the Global Forum on Migration and Development, the High-
Level UN Dialogues on Migration, and the increasing recognition of migration’s
developmental potential in EU policy documents.5 A parallel developmentalist
thrust was prominent in publications emanating from the International Organization
for Migration (IOM) and the UNDP, notably the latter’s Human Development
Report for 2009, entitled Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development
(UNDP 2009). Meanwhile the IOM’s 2013 World Migration Report also focuses on
migration and development as its main theme (IOM 2013). Another aspect of the
changing political context is the pressure coming from some European countries for
the return or repatriation of migrants, especially those deemed “illegal”. Part of the
justification for this pressure for return is cloaked in a rhetoric of contributions to
home-country development. The spread of assisted voluntary return programmes is
a clear indication of this development.
Finally, from a theoretical perspective, publication of the collection of papers
edited by Van Hear and Sørensen (2002) on the migration–development nexus refo-
cused the academic debate, highlighting in particular the role of remittances in
stimulating home-country development. This is consistent with a more “bottom-up”
view of migration and development, drawing on the “new economics” of labour
migration, which foregrounds migration as a family or household decision leading
to the temporary or circulating absence of key workers to generate remittances and
investment for the homeland-based residual household or extended family, both for

5
The European Commission’s first Communication on Migration and Development was published
in 2002 (COM (2002) 703 final) and presented development as little more than a means of migra-
tion control. This had changed by the next Communication in 2005 (COM (2005) 390 final) (see
Collyer 2011). The most recent Commission paper, Maximising the Development Impact of
Migration, published in October 2013 (COM (2013) 292 final), marks a further step-change in EU
discourse. It focuses on internal migration, the impact of climate change, country-of-origin per-
spectives, and the mobility turn, amongst other things, and is framed by a discourse on the rights
of migrants. This is not to say that this change is reflected in EU practice, but it marks an important
shift in emphasis of the political dialogue, which is now radically different from a decade earlier.
172 R. King and M. Collyer

its survival and growth, and as a risk-averting hedge against unforeseen “market
failures” such as a crop wipe-out (Taylor 1999).

Unpacking the M&D Nexus

We identify two diagrammatic representations of the M&D relationship, the second

of which substitutes “underdevelopment” for “development”. Figure 10.1 sets these
out as two simple causal models. The questions are easy to pose but difficult to
answer given conflicting ideological and theoretical stances and a lack of consis-
tency across the mountain of empirical evidence that exists. So, does migration
stimulate development; or is the causal link the reverse, with development leading
to migration? Or is the relationship recursive, leading to a virtuous circle? Taking
the alternative model, does underdevelopment produce migration; or does migration
lead to underdevelopment? Or do they reproduce each other, this time in a vicious
cycle? When we talk about development, who or what is experiencing this? The
receiving society, the sending society, the migrants themselves—or all three in the
aspired-for “triple-win” scenario? Are these hypothesized relationships stable over
time, or are they likely to change according to historical context as well as the geo-
graphical setting and scale of analysis (e.g., household, community, nation)?
Castles’ (2009) view is that simple one-way causality is impossible to infer, and that
both migration and (under)development are part of the same interactive process,
which he labels “global social transformation” (Castles 2010). This argument, at
one level, is persuasive and probably true, but at another level it is perhaps too glib,
allowing us to opt out of asking and responding to certain realist questions. Such
questions reflect the fact that migration is not necessarily a continuous and stable
process (and nor is development). Many migration events occur with particular
intensity in certain places, at certain times, and under certain conditions, such as
economic crisis, civil strife, and environmental stress. Four questions seem particu-
larly relevant, bearing in mind that our primary focus in this chapter is on migration
from poorer countries to richer ones.
1. Does underdevelopment cause outmigration?
2. Does outmigration then lead to further underdevelopment?
3. Or, does outmigration lead to development of the source areas?
4. If outmigration leads to development of the source areas, does this development
lead to less or further outmigration?

migration migration
or
development underdevelopment

Fig. 10.1 Migration and (under)development: two scenarios (Source: Authors)

10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 173

We feel that evidence exists to support a positive answer to the first question.
Studies from around the world have repeatedly shown that people migrate to escape
poverty and other difficult life situations, although it is not necessarily the “poorest
of the poor” who leave (De Haan 1999; Skeldon 2002). Contrasts also exist between
those who see poverty migration as a voluntary act stimulated by the economic
push-pull factors of unemployment and minimal incomes at home and better jobs
and incomes abroad; and on the other hand, those who see this kind of migration as
a forced move driven by the dictates of the globalized but segmented labour market
supported by the predatory behaviour of corporate and individual employers. The
question is, what happens next? If outmigration leads to further underdevelopment
and impoverishment of the home area, then the vicious-cycle model applies. But if
outmigration leads to the source area’s development through resource reallocation
or the inflow of vital remittances, then migration becomes an endogenous factor in
development and we switch to the other, “virtuous” model.
The final question in the set above begs two alternative answers. If development
leads to reduced migration, then this is vindication of the “root causes” argument
whereby, if a state of underdevelopment can be steered towards development, then
the fundamental driver of outmigration will be removed. But this is far from the
whole story, since evidence is accumulating that migration-led development can
also stimulate further emigration through the demonstration effect (the success of
some migrants tempts others to move) and the fact that, as a result of development,
more people have access to the financial resources and social networks necessary
for successful emigration (De Haas 2007). The positive correlation between migra-
tion and development continues until such time as the country or region reaches a
level of development whereby poverty-induced migration no longer occurs, thereby
producing an inverted U-curve, labelled by Martin and Taylor (1996) as the “migra-
tion hump” (Fig. 10.2).

Fig. 10.2 Migration and Migration

development: “root causes” the migration hump
versus “the hump”
(Source: Adapted from
Martin and Taylor (1996))

root causes

Underdevelopment High Development

174 R. King and M. Collyer

Virtuous and Vicious Circles: Theoretical Underpinnings

Figure 10.1 portrays two simple models of the M&D relationship, representing
respectively a virtuous and a vicious circle. The virtuous version relies on orthodox
economic arguments but exhibits two variants, based in turn on neoclassical and
“new” economics of migration. According to neoclassical equilibrium theory, peo-
ple make rational, well-informed calculations of the costs of, and returns to, migra-
tion (Sjaastad 1962). They migrate as individual decision-makers responding to
differential wage rates, real incomes, and (un)employment rates in different regions
or countries. They move from high-unemployment, low-wage economies to places
where wages are significantly higher (sufficiently higher to discount the costs of
migration) and jobs are widely available. By transferring labour from a high-supply,
low-marginal-productivity country to one which has high demand and high marginal
productivity of labour, migration increases aggregate economic welfare and eventu-
ally equalizes wage and employment differences through factor-price convergence.
An equilibrium is reached, and migration ceases; the system is self-regulating and
self-correcting. The developmental effects accrue especially to the destination coun-
try, which receives an extra supply of labour to boost growth (Borjas 1995). For the
sending country, according to equilibrium theory, incomes should rise as the down-
ward pressure on wages wrought by an over-supply of labour is removed, and other
resources—such as land and housing—are reallocated accordingly. The neoclassical
model has its own internal economic logic, but is based on many unrealistic assump-
tions, including “perfect information” and no barriers to migration. It also “assumes
away” the social context of families and kinship, and says nothing about integration.
Under this model there is no return migration—returnees are simply “failures” who
miscalculated the costs and benefits of their migration (Cassarino 2004).
Remittances are rarely mentioned in the neoclassical interpretation of M&D, but
they are central to the new economics of labour migration (NELM) model (Taylor
1999). Still essentially an orthodox economic model, NELM shifts focus from the
individual to the household and stresses migrants’ agency within the family setting.
Moreover, migration takes place not just to maximize income from labour but to
minimize the risk of “market failures” such as a natural disaster or a collapse in the
price of a key product. Under the NELM model, one or more family members
migrate (usually those whose labour power is most marketable abroad, such as a
young male construction worker or a female domestic worker), leaving others
behind to continue the household’s business (e.g., a small farm holding). In this way
a portfolio of income and subsistence sources is created, cushioning the effects of a
possible failure in one of the sources. Remittances are sent to support the residual
family in the home country, and may be deployed in a variety of uses: setting up a
new enterprise, educating young family members, or responding to an emergency
(e.g., a drought or medical bills). Once the target is reached, return migration can
take place—hence, under this model returnees are successes, not failures—although
other household members may continue the tradition of migration in order to pre-
serve the flow of remittances.
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 175

Completely opposite to the neoclassical and NELM visions of M&D is the

vicious cycle interpretation. Drawing on Marxist political economy, historical-
structuralism, the Latin American Dependencia School (Frank 1969) and
Wallerstein’s (1974) world systems theory, this framework sees migration between
poor and rich countries as part of the “development of underdevelopment” in the
economic periphery. Migrants are the pawns of global capitalism, part of capital’s
search for a “reserve army” of cheap, exploitable, and expendable labour. Delgado
Wise and Márquez Covarrubias (2011) view migration as integral to the reproduc-
tion of global and regional inequality and as reinforcing the structures of spatial
uneven development. These authors see such labour transfers as forced migration
between unequal partners (e.g., Mexico and the USA, Morocco and Europe) bound
together in a system of profoundly asymmetric integration. Such migration contrib-
utes to the development of the advanced receiving society but impoverishes the
already-poor sending country. Under this optic, migration is self-perpetuating, via
mechanisms of cumulative causation, not self-correcting to an equilibrium state.
Peripheral countries or regions in the global economic and geopolitical system are
condemned to remain peripheral, their main function being to supply whatever raw
materials (including labour) they have to the countries of the “core”. In this model,
remittances and return migration do not feature as exogenous stimuli for develop-
ment. Remittances are argued to be largely “wasted” on housing and consumer
goods, resulting in “modernization without development”, and return migration is
said to bring back only the sick, the exhausted, and the retired.

Optimism, Pessimism, and the Neoliberal Agenda

The theoretical-ideological models outlined above have held sway in three alternat-
ing periods of more or less 20 years each. The optimism of the 1950s and 1960s, the
decades of mass labour migration in Europe, was replaced by the pessimism of the
1970s and 1980s. Renewed optimism came with the rise of the transnationalist and
new economics paradigms in the academic study and policy framing of migration in
the 1990s and 2000s. In two important papers, De Haas (2010, 2012) maps these
swings of the “migration and development pendulum” as follows (see also Faist and
Fauser 2011; Gamlen 2014).
The 1950s and 1960s saw economic reconstruction and industrial expansion in
North-Western Europe. Labour migration transferred workers, initially temporary
“guest workers”, from labour-surplus to labour-deficit regions of Europe. Little
attempt was made to integrate these migrant workers, since it was assumed that their
stay would be temporary. True, they were economically integrated into the host
country’s production system, but they were not encouraged to integrate socially and
culturally, and they were given limited legal and civic rights. From a developmental
perspective, the general view, at least on the part of many economists and
policymakers, was that this labour migration not only helped North-Western
European economies to rebuild, industrialize, and modernize, but also upgraded
176 R. King and M. Collyer

living standards in the sending areas through rising wages, capital transfers (remit-
tances and some capital investments facilitated by low-cost labour and fiscal
incentives), and re-skilled returnees (Kindleberger 1967).
Critical voices played down these achievements. They claimed that remittances
failed to stimulate development beyond consumption and that returnees, who had
mostly done menial jobs in factories and on construction sites, brought little rele-
vant knowledge and skills. Few returnees invested in viable enterprises that spawned
economic multiplier effects, like creating new employment for the local economy
(Böhning 1975). At the same time, it was noted that migrants had “failed” to inte-
grate largely because of the host society’s barriers of exclusion and racism (Castles
and Kosack 1973). This pessimism widened to a more general critique of migration-
led development after the oil crisis brought a halt to labour-migrant recruitment in
Europe in 1973. Seers et al. (1979) applied the core–periphery model to the
European case, the result being that “developmentalism” gave way to “dependency”
and “underdevelopmentalism” as characterizations of the theoretical and empirical
outcome of the post-oil crisis years. It was argued that emigration not only took
away the youngest, fittest, and most ambitious of the less-educated workers from
the peripheral regions, it also produced a brain drain of the more highly educated,
leading to an overall decline in the periphery’s endowment of human capital.
During the 1990s the pendulum swung again, back towards the optimistic view
of migration’s contribution to development. Both ideological shifts and a large vol-
ume of empirical evidence lay behind this new optimism. First, there was a critique
of the deterministic neo-Marxist model of migration, which now seemed old-
fashioned and illogical. The downward spiral of cumulative causation—for exam-
ple, underdevelopment produces migration, which leads to further underdevelopment
and thus more migration—could not continue forever; and the accumulating evi-
dence of the migration hump—for instance, the way that the Southern European
countries transitioned from mass emigration to mass immigration—was more con-
vincing. Moreover, an increasing body of empirical studies carried out at the time
revealed that, under certain conditions, migration could positively contribute to the
development of regions and countries of origin, and that a more positive integration
outcome often correlated with better home-country development feedbacks (De
Haas 2010, 240). Inspired by NELM thinking, migration came to be seen as an
effective route out of poverty, and as a rational strategy for household sustenance
and improvement. Remittances took centre stage in this M&D neo-optimism.
Indeed, they became a kind of mantra for economists and policymakers working in
this sector of development (Kapur 2005). Against the pessimists’ claim that remit-
tances were “wasted” on extravagant housing and social-status performances, stud-
ies traced productive and development-inducing effects (see Adams and Page 2005;
Gammeltoft 2002; Lucas 2005, 145–206; Ngoma and Ismail 2013). Remittance
spending on housing and consumption, after all, did improve the quality of life and
generate multiplier effects in the local economy, creating employment and
stimulating demand for goods and services. Improved housing not only raised social
status, but also contributed to general wellbeing, health, and safety (De Haas 2012,
13). Once basic needs were met, some remittances were invested in farming,
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 177

small enterprises, and services, especially in regions where such investments could
bear fruit, such as agriculturally productive lands or areas undergoing tourism
development.
The new optimism described above reflects neoliberal ideas about individual ini-
tiative: the migrant is constituted as the key agent, even the hero, of development.
Faist and Fauser (2011, 7) draw parallels with the French policy notion co-
development, which positions the migrant as a partner in development cooperation.
But it is also clear that the preferred type of migration has also changed, shifting
back to an emphasis on temporary or circular migration—a return to the guest
worker (Castles 2006) without, however, using that term. Circular migration is pre-
sented as the ideal type in order to maximize remittances and home-country com-
mitment, as well as (though this is rarely made explicit) to prevent long-term
settlement and consequent “integration problems”. This shift in thinking about
migration is currently receiving considerable academic attention (e.g., Ruhs 2006;
Skeldon 2012) and has become enshrined in the terminology and policy thrusts of
many prominent international policy actors. We cite three examples to make this
point. The Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM), set up by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, noted in its report, ‘the old paradigm of permanent
migrant settlement is progressively giving way to temporary and circular migration’
(GCIM 2005, 31). The GCIM stressed ‘the need to grasp the developmental oppor-
tunities that this important shift in migration patterns provides for countries of ori-
gin’ and went on to encourage ‘countries of destination [to] promote circular
migration by providing mechanisms and channels that enable migrants to move
easily between their countries of origin and destination’. Second, successive vol-
umes of the IOM’s World Migration Report have likewise proposed that more cir-
cular migration can bring developmental benefits to developing countries (see, e.g.,
IOM 2008). Third, the UNDP’s 2009 Human Development Report paired “human
mobility” and “development” in its subtitle and argued strongly for ‘overcoming the
barriers’ to mobility, thereby releasing the potential for temporary migration to con-
tribute ‘large gains to human development’ (UNDP 2009, 3).
These landmark statements by key international actors reflect different variants
of the so-called “triple-win” scenario whereby migration is said to be “good” for the
receiving and the sending countries, as well as for the migrants themselves.
However, doubts about the attainability of the win-win-win situation lead us towards
a more critical stance and a possible backswing of the pendulum towards a fourth
stage, ‘neo-pessimism’ (De Haas 2012, 22; Gamlen 2014), based on a two-pronged
reappraisal of the optimistic view of M&D. First, empirical evidence on migrants’
real lives, either when they are working in exploitative conditions abroad, or from
the perspective of their still-poor home communities, often reveals that the over-
celebratory discourse of M&D is misplaced. The second reframing comes from
questioning the ideology underlying the neoliberal agenda. Bronden (2012, 3) sees
the ‘positive’ M&D initiatives and policies discussed above as the ‘human face of
neoliberalism’, masking more repressive agendas driven by the global North relat-
ing to migration control, securitization, and the necessity of preserving the hegemony
of the dominant economic and geopolitical powers. This encourages us to redirect
178 R. King and M. Collyer

our gaze to the structural forces that are obscured by neoliberal rhetoric about
migrants as the “best” agents for development—which for Glick Schiller (2012, 93)
is little more than ‘spin’. As Harvey (2005) among others shows, neoliberalism has
created new wealth but only by destroying previous spatial structures and social
relations of production, changing distribution and consumption patterns, and gener-
ating new forms of desire (see also Glick Schiller 2011, 37). These transformations
and translocations, whilst opening up new opportunities for migrants within seg-
mented, gendered, and sexualized fractions of the global labour market, have at the
same time subjected many migrants to regimes of control, social exclusion, and
denial of rights. Migrants’ vulnerability has been increased rather than reduced, as
the latest economic crisis has demonstrated, especially in countries like Greece and
Spain that have been harshly affected by financial meltdown.

Towards a Broader Framing of Migration and Development

Over the past 20 or so years, two major paradigm shifts have affected the way we
theorize and operationalize the concept of migration: these are the transnational
perspective of the 1990s and the mobility turn of the 2000s, based respectively on
foundational studies by Glick Schiller et al. (1992, 1995) and Urry (2000, 2007).
Taken together, these opened up for study the transnational mobilities enfolded
within longer term and more stable migration and integration systems—mobilities
not only of people (e.g., visiting “home” or trading back and forth) but also of
money, goods, ideas, and images, which circulate within, and indeed construct and
constitute, transnational social and economic space (Faist 2008). Remittances
remain a key part of the economics of transnational life (Guarnizo 2003), but they
need to be understood in a wider context of, first, transnational social, kinship, and
gender dynamics, and second, state macroeconomic policy and institutional struc-
tures. Thanks to Levitt (1998, 926), our understanding has broadened to include
social remittances: ‘the ideas, behaviours, identities, and social capital that flow
from receiving- to sending-country communities’ and which are dependent on the
level of integration achieved by migrants in host countries. Subsequent thinking
about social remittances has benefited from a yet broader light. Political and cultural
remittances include ideas about democracy, entitlement, transparency, morality, and
cultural codes that move not just from host to sending country but are circular,
building on the social and cultural capital that migrants start out with before migra-
tion (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011).
The transnational lens also creates the framework for adding a third M&D mech-
anism to return and remittances: the recent emphasis on “mobilizing the diaspora”
for homeland development (Brinkerhoff 2008; Collyer 2013; Newland and Tanaka
2010; Sørensen 2007). Migrants and their descendants who are residentially based
abroad can become geographically mobile “transnational agents” and “diasporic
actors” stimulating development in homeland communities by setting up businesses,
investing in growth enterprises, and becoming politically or philanthropically active
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 179

(Faist and Fauser 2011, 8). The issue of diaspora-led development is receiving
increasing attention from home-country governments, international bodies, and
donor agencies. Among the prescriptions for capitalizing on this development
resource are the need to create an information-rich enabling environment that offers
incentives for the diaspora to invest and “get involved” and the recommendation
that homeland governments target certain segments or members of the diaspora who
have the most to offer (Brinkerhoff 2009). Having said this, emigrants and diasporic
people do not always have good relations with homeland authorities. There may be
political cleavages and low levels of trust in the ability of governments to act trans-
parently and efficiently. Therefore much diasporic activity in the homeland is indi-
vidualistic or administered through nongovernmental organizations. Nevertheless,
diasporic actors have the capacity to move “beyond remittances” through their
entrepreneurial activities, including investment, venture capital partnerships, and
training and mentoring visits (Newland and Tanaka 2010).
Not only has the meaning of migration become stretched and diversified, the
same applies to understandings of development. The most recent trend is to look at
development through a human wellbeing perspective. The IOM’s 2013 World
Migration Report shifted the developmental focus onto the happiness and wellbeing
of migrants and their family members. Gough and McGregor (2007, 34) in their
study of wellbeing in developing countries offer the following definition of human
wellbeing: ‘a state of being with others, where human needs are met, where one can
act meaningfully to pursue one’s goals and where one enjoys satisfactory quality of
life’. A key distinction made in the literature is that between objective and subjec-
tive wellbeing (Wright 2012, 9–11). The former concentrates on statistical indica-
tors of, for example, income, health, and employment, whereas the latter is based on
subjective experience and evaluation, including both perceptions of the objective
measures and culturally embedded meanings and understandings, for example, of
what is a “nice” or “large” house. A review by the IOM of several studies reveals
mixed results depending on context, but generally supports the view that migrants
experience enhanced wellbeing compared to non-migrants (IOM 2013, 114–170).

How Does the M&D Frame Relate to the Integration Process,

and Vice Versa?

In this final part of the chapter we link the discussion on M&D to the main theme of
this book, integration. In doing so, we investigate a relationship between two areas
of policy discussion—that on the integration of migrants in Europe and other
advanced countries, and that on development in poor countries—that are usually
kept separate. We also need to remind ourselves that integration is a multi-sphered
process, including amongst others the legal-political, socio-economic, and cultural-
religious realms, each of which contains various aspects, for example, housing,
employment, education, voting rights, membership in ethnic organizations, and so
on. We start by continuing the framing of migration within a transnational
180 R. King and M. Collyer

perspective, as this allows us to consider migrants’ simultaneous acceptance as part

of different social worlds—those of their origin and destination society and possibly,
too, of a third, diasporic social space. From an integration perspective, two questions
then arise. First, what is the relationship between migrants’ integration process, or
their “state” of integration, in the host society, and the impact this has on their capac-
ity or willingness to instigate or participate in development in their countries,
regions, and communities of origin? Second, for those who return migrate, how does
the reintegration process proceed? This latter question has been little studied.
In their essay on African migrants in Europe, Grillo and Mazzucato (2008) argue
that such migrants are “doubly engaged” in both places, “here” and “there”. It must
be stressed that not all migrants lead transnational lives. Some eventually become
assimilated and detached from their origin countries, while others, refugees, may
not be able to engage with their homeland which, for them, may no longer exist as
such. However, those who do live transnationally experience this double engage-
ment in three domains: material livelihoods, family relations, and socio-cultural
identity (Grillo and Mazzucato 2008, 185–191). In her more detailed study of
Ghanaian migrants based in the Netherlands, Mazzucato (2008) shows that they are
active in the labour market and participate in the Dutch economy at the neighbour-
hood, city, and national levels. At the same time, and more importantly for them,
they invest back in Ghana in housing, businesses, and family members’ wellbeing
and education, including donations to funerals. They are thus economically (as well
as socially and culturally) integrated in both places. In one sense this is a zero-sum
relationship: economic resources invested in the Netherlands, for instance, on
accommodation, living costs, and consumer goods, cannot be deployed in Ghana.
On the other hand, there is also a positive synergy in that the more economically
successful a migrant is in the Netherlands, the more resources are generated for
“development” back home. This leads us directly to a more formal theoretical and
empirical examination of the key question: How does “integration” impact on
home-country development?
One interesting framework for answering this question is Cerase’s (1974) model
of the relationship between integration and return migration. Based on a case study
of Italian return migration from the USA in the early post-war decades (243 return-
ees were interviewed in various parts of Italy), Cerase tried to demonstrate that the
impact of return was dependent on the time spent abroad and, in particular, on the
stage of the integration process that the migrant had reached at the time when the
return took place. The author proposed a model with four outcome phases. The first
phase is when the migrant fails to adjust to the new society (integration is thus mini-
mal) and return takes place after a very short time (within a year or so). Upon return,
such migrants are absorbed as if they had never left. Cerase calls this the return of
failure and posits that this has no impact on development. In phase two, the immi-
grant stays abroad longer, but remains oriented towards the homeland and the notion
of return there. Some integration in US society takes place, but not much. This type
of returnee has their sights fixed on a return to the old ways, but with an improved
socio-economic status due to the ability to purchase agricultural land or to build a
new house. Whilst some new attitudes and behaviours have been absorbed from the
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 181

USA, such as a greater respect for social justice and a more open and informal
mentality, the developmental effects of this kind of return remain limited. This is
termed the return of conservatism. For those who remain abroad yet longer, the
integration process becomes more advanced and migrants become increasingly
attuned to US society and its ways of life and values. This also diminishes the likeli-
hood of return, but for those who do go back, the potential for real developmental
impact is greater. This third phase, the return of innovation, brings new ideas, ener-
gies, and business practices which, provided there is fertile terrain for their applica-
tion in the homeland context, can indeed stimulate development. Such returnees are,
however, a minority in the overall return-migrant population, and their desire and
potential for change are often stifled by the entrenched power of local non-migrant
elites. The final stage of return is that of retirement, when well-integrated migrants
feel the pull of nostalgia at the end of their working lives; but, being economically
inactive, their developmental impact is limited.
Although the Cerase model is intuitively attractive and logical, and has been
much cited, its limitations are obvious. Its interpretation of development is largely
“economic modernization”, and it reduces integration to a one-dimensional linear
process. A more robust and nuanced conceptualization of integration is developed
in studies that statistically model various dimensions of integration according to a
variety of transnational orientations towards the home country including remittance-
sending, paying regular visits, and attitudes towards return migration (see Cela et al.
2013; De Haas and Fokkema 2011; Fokkema et al. 2013). What these studies tend
to demonstrate is that migrants who are economically well integrated in the host
country are more likely to have meaningful transnational engagement with their
origin-country society, including sending remittances and other actions with posi-
tive developmental outcomes, such as business investment. On the other hand,
migrants who are socio-culturally well integrated are more likely to become
detached from their home country and therefore less actively involved in transna-
tional activities that might lead to development. This contrasting correlation—posi-
tive between economic integration, transnationalism, and development and negative
for socio-cultural integration’s impact—seems to hold for both first- and second-
generation migrants, according to the studies cited above, which are based on a
variety of migrant groups in different countries.6 Alongside these quantitative anal-
yses are studies that take a more intuitive approach. Erdal and Oeppen (2013)
describe the relationship between integration and transnationalism as a “balancing
act” whereby the migrant straddles two societies. Reviewing the literature, Erdal
and Oeppen (2013, 875) find that outcomes are highly context-specific, depending
on place, type of migration, and within the same migration system, also varying
over time (see also Snel et al. 2006). One issue with Erdal and Oeppen’s analysis,

6
To be specific, Cela et al. (2013) look at Eastern Europeans (Poles, Ukrainians, Moldovans,
Romanians, and Albanians) in Italy; De Haas and Fokkema (2011) study African migrants in
Southern Europe (Moroccans and Senegalese in Spain, Egyptians and Ghanaians in Italy); whilst
Fokkema et al. (2013) examine the remittance behaviour of second-generation Turks, Moroccans,
and people of Yugoslav heritage in several European cities.
182 R. King and M. Collyer

and with other studies that examine the integration–transnationalism interface, is

the extent to which transnationalism equates to “development” of the origin society.
Where remittances and investments are involved, the link is fairly clear (albeit
dependent on how these financial flows are utilized), but given that some authors
(Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Vertovec 1999) view transnationalism as both
“ways of being” and “ways of belonging”, the developmental aspect is less
obvious.
The fact remains that further research is sorely needed on the relationship
between integration (and its multifaceted elements) and engagement in home-
country development. Shifting understandings of what integration actually is, and
what policies should be applied along the spectrum from multiculturalism to assimi-
lation, serve only to complicate the M&D relationship. Critics of multiculturalism
argue that it has proven detrimental to economic integration, leading instead to cul-
tural and religious separatism, which threatens national identity. The widespread
view that multiculturalism has somehow “failed” leads many countries to adopt
more assimilationist-oriented policies towards immigrants. What implications this
has for the developmental potential of migration is not clear. There is the argument,
advanced by Castles et al. (2014, 80):
[I]mmigrant-receiving governments can increase the developmental potential of migration
by lowering the thresholds for immigration… and through favouring the socioeconomic
integration of migrants by countering discrimination and racism on the labour market and
giving them access to housing and education as well as residency and (dual) citizenship
rights.

Yet, as we also noted, recent trends towards more demand-driven temporary and
circular migration ignore the integration dimension and do nothing to foster long-
term settlement rights.
The final question addressed in this chapter concerns the phenomenon of
migrants’ reintegration in their home countries, and the developmental context of
this process. This question was broached early on in the return–development debate
(see, e.g., Van Gendt 1977) but, to the best of our knowledge, it has never been
thoroughly investigated, neither at the theoretical nor at the empirical level.7
Theoretically, the key questions would seem to be the following: Does integration
into the immigration country’s host society imply a process of “de-integration”
from the home-country society? Is gradual re-acceptance as part of the (home) soci-
ety contingent on a gradual loss of acceptance in the former destination? Or does the
opposite apply, namely, that the personal skills and social and human capital
required for rapid and successful acceptance as part of a new host society are also
effective in enabling a smooth reintegration upon return? Early sociological studies
of return migration—for example, by Saloutos (1956) on returning Greek-Americans
and Lopreato (1967) on the impact of return migration on a South Italian village—
tend to show that long-absent migrants face difficulties in reintegrating back home.

7
Indicative of this lacuna is the recent Metropolis public seminar Migrant Reintegration and
Homeland Development, Ottowa, 14 March 2014, designed to ‘discuss the development potential
offered by the continuum of migrant integration, return, and reintegration into the homeland’.
10 Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration 183

At best they formed a nouveau riche group interposed between the traditional elites
and the peasant or working class from which they had been drawn. Local people
often viewed them with a mixture of suspicion and jealousy. But these studies are
from an earlier era of long-distance migration, when the socio-economic and cul-
tural divide between sending and receiving countries constituted a wider time–space
gap. Nowadays, with many migrants engaged in more intense transnational circuits
of personal travel, financial flows, and other transactions, as well as the globaliza-
tion of information and cultural codes, the outcome is likely to be different. However,
the wealth of theoretical concepts and analytical tools that have been applied to
study the process of migrant integration in Europe and elsewhere has yet to be
turned to the study of return migrants’ reintegration. Here is a major empirical chal-
lenge for migration studies scholars working in a developmental context.

Conclusion

Researchers, analysts, and policymakers continue to struggle in comprehending the

nature of the multiple relationships between migration, development, and integra-
tion. As we have seen, at least three obstacles stand in the way of a mature and
nuanced understanding: problems of definition and measurement of all three phe-
nomena; ideological positions that are impossible to reconcile; and the conflicting
and hence inconclusive nature of the empirical evidence, too much of which is
based on narrowly defined case studies. The way forward is not easy to identify.
Migration, (under)development, and (non-)integration are all “facts of global life”,
which are not easily managed towards desired positive outcomes, except perhaps at
a fairly local level. Individual linkages, for instance, between emigration and home-
country development or between different models of integration and willingness to
invest time and resources in developing hometown communities, are difficult to
isolate within the matrix of collateral processes such as economic cycles, different
and dynamic host-country politics, and the new post-9/11 security environment.
The mid-2014 round of European and local elections, furthermore, was marked by
a sharp rise in voters’ support for anti-immigration parties in some countries (par-
ticularly the UK, France, and Greece). In an increasingly xenophobic climate, rhet-
oric obscures analysis, and migration’s potential contribution to home-country
development is pushed to the background.
Proponents of the virtuous-circle view of M&D thus find themselves squeezed
between those who call ever-louder for migration control and those who criticize
the entire edifice of the M&D nexus in the neoliberal era and are moving the pendu-
lum towards its fourth, neo-pessimistic swing (Delgado Wise and Márquez
Covarrubias 2011; Gamlen 2014; Kunz 2008; Page and Mercer 2012; Raghuram
2009). A key question thus becomes how to stop the pendulum swinging. An obvi-
ous answer is to move towards a more rigorous evaluation of existing research
evidence, downgrading the significance of small-scale case studies and privileging
larger scale and especially comparative studies. Even so, challenges remain, given
184 R. King and M. Collyer

the diversity of types of migration (e.g., short and long term, high and low skilled)
and of historical and geographical contexts. Undoubtedly, there is more scope for
analysis of global-scale socio-economic datasets and migration variables related to
development outcomes (e.g., Czaika 2013; Ngoma and Ismail 2013; Sanderson
2013) and perhaps also of socio-economic and legal-political integration variables.
The way forward is also for more collaboration and cross-fertilization to take
place across three main areas of scholarship and policymaking that hitherto have not
spoken much to each other: those who study migration as a process of transnational
movement; those who study development; and those who study integration and
social cohesion. This conversation needs to take place across disciplines, between
those with research and policy experience in different parts of the world, and at
multiple scales of analysis, from the global down through the regional (such as the
EU), to countries, cities, communities, and households.

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Chapter 11
Analysis and Conclusions

Rinus Penninx and Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas

Introduction

This state-of-the-art volume taking stock of and presenting existing research on

integration processes and policies in Europe was triggered by European Union
(EU)-level policymaking on integration. A 2011 European Commission policy doc-
ument proposes that integration policies should involve not only immigrants and the
society of settlement but also actors in immigrants’ countries of origin (EC 2011).
Compared to the Commission’s earlier definition of integration (EC 2003), this con-
stituted a shift from a two-way to a three-way process approach. The current volume
has reformulated the EU’s policy shift into a broader question for academia and
integration research: What does research have to say about (the study of) integration
processes and, in particular, about the relevance of actors in origin countries for
integration? What does the existing literature say about integration policies in
Europe and use of the concept of integration in policy formulation and practice?
Does the proposal to include actors in countries of origin as important players in
integration policies find legitimation in empirical research?
With the purpose of answering these questions, we asked experts in the relevant
subfields to write state-of-the-art chapters. Chapter 2, by Penninx and Garcés-
Mascareñas, examined development of the concept of integration in the academic
study of settlement processes of migrants and in policies. Chapter 3, by Van Mol and
De Valk, analysed changes in migration patterns and characteristics of immigrants
as a potential explanatory factor for changes in integration processes and policies.

R. Penninx (*)
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Garcés-Mascareñas
GRITIM, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 189

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_11
190 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 covered basic aspects of policy development: Doomernik and

Bruquetas-Callejo wrote on national policies of EU countries, Scholten and Penninx
analysed the multilevel governance of migration and integration, and Mügge and
Van der Haar scrutinized the categorization and target groups of policies. The fol-
lowing Chaps. 7, 8, 9 and 10 shifted the focus to migrants’ countries of origin and
the relevance of these for immigrants’ integration: Mügge took stock of the transna-
tional activities of individual migrants and the relation of these to integration;
Van Ewijk and Nijenhuis reviewed the literature on transnational–local relations and
the role of migrant organizations, as well as the relation of these with integration;
and Østergaard-Nielsen outlined how governments of countries of origin relate to
their citizens abroad and what this could potentially mean for their integration.
Finally, King and Collyer examined the migration–development nexus in search of
a possible relation between it and immigrant integration.
How do these elements of analysis come together to answer the questions posed
above? This final chapter first considers how the concept of integration has been
(and can be) used as an analytical tool in academic research on integration processes
of immigrants. Second, it reviews the way integration as a concept has been used in
policies at various levels. This leads into an analysis of how integration is perceived
by actors at different levels in origin countries. These steps enable us to draw some
final conclusions on the European Commission’s proposal to move from a two-way
to a three-way process approach.

The Concept of Integration

Integration is a rather specific post-war European term. As a field of research, the

study of settlement processes of immigrants in Europe has an ambivalent relation
with an earlier tradition of settlement studies: that in the USA. Europe borrowed
from North America the essential framing of such studies, as how immigrants as
newcomers find their place in the society in which they settle. Yet, the concept of
assimilation that was developed by US researchers was rejected in Europe as lop-
sided in two respects: (i) in seeing the process of settlement as primarily one in
which newcomers undergo a progression of cultural change and (ii) in seeing settle-
ment as a linear process towards assimilation in mainstream society.
The concept of integration as it developed in European research during the past
half century remained focused on the settlement of newcomers, but became more
complex and rich. First, research on integration looked systematically at both the
society of settlement and at immigrants as the two parties involved in the settlement
process, often recognizing a dominance of the receiving society in this process.
Second, research spelled out several dimensions of the integration process: the
legal/political, the socioeconomic, and the cultural/religious.
The legal/political dimension of integration was exhaustively studied in two
main respects. First, studies explored the legal status attributed by admission poli-
cies and the consequences of that status (or the absence thereof) for integration.
11 Analysis and Conclusions 191

Second, immigrants’ participation in politics (or the lack of such participation) was
investigated in the broadest sense, with this second strand of research often labelled
citizenship studies.
In the socio economic dimension, research looked at the position of immigrants
in key fields of societal stratification: work and income, education, housing, and
health. Where the benchmarks were natives or non-immigrants, these studies were
called equality studies. If they were longitudinal within a group, they were labelled
(intergenerational) social mobility studies.
In the cultural/religious dimension, study of the cultural and religious adaptation
of newcomers has long been central. Nowadays, however, the perception and accep-
tance of newcomers by natives has become increasingly important. Immigrants’
culture and religion are, furthermore, studied as collective phenomena, as is the
political and societal organization of cultural and religious diversity and its recogni-
tion in the society of settlement. This branch of research has been incorporated
under equity studies.
The study of integration has also gained by distinguishing between levels at
which integration processes take place and by studying the different mechanisms
involved. Firstly, there is the micro-level of individual immigrants and their house-
holds and kin, and the comparable micro-level of native individuals in the society of
settlement, with research examining how they perceive and react to one another.
Secondly, there is the level of collectivities of both immigrant groups and natives and
how they relate to each other. Thirdly, there is the level of institutions, both general
institutions relevant to all residents and specific ones of and for immigrants.
Chapter 2 traced the development of the concept of integration as a rich analyti-
cal tool with great potential, particularly when it is used in combination with sys-
tematic comparisons. This tool can also serve to map and look critically at integration
research in Europe. In a review of the state of the art of European research on inte-
gration, Penninx et al. (2006) observe that most studies are strongly embedded in
national contexts. Furthermore, they note that European research on migration and
integration has been fragmented in three ways: a lack of comparative research, a
lack of cooperation among disciplines, and a lack of integration of the different
levels at which phenomena are studied.
In recent years, significantly more international comparative research has been
accomplished, often financed by the EU, remedying to some extent the method-
ological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002) that went hand-in-hand with
a strong embeddedness of research in the national (policy) arena. Such comparisons
may also help to overcome space-based forms of fragmentation by including more
than one spatial unit (e.g., a borough, city, region, nation state, or supra-national or
international arena). While the nation state was dominant in research from the
beginning, there is now a growing body of research on both the local and the inter-
national and supra-national levels. The relations between these levels and the com-
plex ways in which they influence each other, however, have yet to be explored.
At the same time, fragmentation continues. Divisions are still strong along
disciplinary lines, with particularly legal and economic studies remaining
largely autonomous and employing self-contained approaches. Furthermore, new
192 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

fragmentation has arisen, for example, in specializations within the three dimen-
sions of integration sketched above, such as citizenship studies, equality and social
mobility studies, racism and xenophobia studies, and equity studies. Such special-
izations do have merit, as they deepen insights on the specific dimension concerned;
but they may also bypass the larger integration picture. Holistic studies that take all
three dimensions into account and look at interrelations between them are rare,
though much needed for further theoretical development.

The Concept of Integration in Policies

The development of the concept of integration in policies (i.e., the specific meaning
that is given explicitly or implicitly to integration in policy formulation and prac-
tice) must be understood against the backdrop of immigration’s framing in Europe.
Here again, the transcontinental comparison between Europe and North America
accentuates the differences. While the USA and Canada define themselves as coun-
tries built by immigration and immigrants, North-Western European countries in the
post-war period did exactly the opposite. Their guest worker policies set out to
attract hands for their booming economies but on a temporary basis, ideally without
guest workers’ families and with an explicit expectation of return. From this per-
spective, there was no need for integration policies in the legal/political and cul-
tural/religious sense, and integration in the socioeconomic dimension was pursued
only as far and as long as required by immigrants’ presumably temporary stay.

National Integration Policies

Since the 1970s, and particularly after labour migration stopped in the mid-1970s, a
contradiction has grown between the facts of immigration and countries’ self-
perceived norm of not being a nation of immigration. In a few countries this tension
led to comprehensive integration policies pertaining not only to the socioeconomic
domain but also the political and cultural spheres. Sweden started such integration
policies in 1975 (Hammar 2004) and the Netherlands followed suit in the early
1980s (Penninx 1981). However, most national governments in Europe maintained
the illusion of immigrants’ temporariness and return up to the late 1990s and 2000s,
therefore confining themselves to ad hoc adaptive measures. In practice, this left the
responsibility for integration to the local level of cities and to parties in civil society
such as trade unions, churches, and welfare organizations (Penninx 2005).
When the increasingly politicized climate of the late 1990s and early 2000s pushed
for the implementation of integration policies at the national level, the term integra-
tion started to acquire a different meaning. Whereas early policy conceptions such as
those used in Sweden and the Netherlands had been rights-based, aimed at structural
integration in the socioeconomic domains and framed in a liberal cultural atmosphere
(later called “multicultural”), the new approach focused increasingly on the cultural
11 Analysis and Conclusions 193

dimension of integration as an obligation of immigrants, as cultural and value-based

commonalities were thought to be essential for social cohesion. Acquisition of
national citizenship—promoted in early Swedish and Dutch policies as an instrument
that would facilitate structural integration—was increasingly redefined as the crown
on a finalized process of cultural adaptation. This new cultural conception of integra-
tion policies went hand in hand with a redefinition of the identity of North-Western
European countries. The claims and outcomes of discussions on the “identity” of
receiving societies (as modern, liberal, democratic, laïcist, equal, enlightened, etc.)
were translated into civic integration requirements for immigrants and civic integra-
tion courses of an assimilative nature. The latest development—compulsory pre-
immigration courses, such as those developed in the Netherlands—extends this logic
even further. Under the label of integration, such courses actually function as instru-
ments to make immigration more restrictive and selective (Guild et al. 2009).
The picture thus sketched is one that holds for the “first generation immigration
countries” in North-Western Europe. As Doomernik and Bruquetas-Callejo assert
in Chap. 4 of this volume, this North-Western European model became dominant
and influential, as the immigration regulations of these countries became the formal
standard for the EU and, through the acquis, the blueprint for all EU countries that
acceded later. Similarly, these same countries tried in the 2000s to transpose their
new national integration policies and civic integration courses to the European level
as exemplary for other EU countries (Goeman 2012). Notwithstanding these pres-
sures, quite different immigration and integration policies developed in practice in
the “second generation immigration countries”, particularly in Southern Europe.
Most immigration to those countries has been legalized ex-post by regularizations.
Integration measures and policies have been initiated since the mid-1990s, predomi-
nantly at the local and regional levels, based on rights of access to important social
services irrespective of one’s immigrant status. Such local policies have aimed pri-
marily at insertion of migrants into the labour market and were embedded in a lib-
eral cultural atmosphere that has tended to use interculturality as a strategy.
Doomernik and Bruquetas-Callejo note a third model of integration policies
emerging in the Central and East European member states. There the number of
immigrants is still low and immigration and integration issues are not high political
priorities. Mostly supported by European funding, civil society actors, nongovern-
mental organizations (NGOs), and local authorities have developed reception and
integration activities while pressuring national governments to develop integration
policies.

Local Integration Policies

Local integration policies have been either in the shadow of national integration
policies or developed independently in the absence of national policy. This is largely
due to the fact that migration policies (decisions on who is allowed to enter and
stay) are predominantly a national competence. If immigration policy is followed
by a national integration policy, as happened early on in Sweden and the Netherlands,
194 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

then local integration policies are stimulated and facilitated by these preceding
national frameworks. This is why Dutch and Swedish cities have a relatively long
history of local integration policies (Scholten et al. 2015; Penninx 2015). But, as we
have seen, factual immigration is not necessarily followed by an integration policy
at the national level. Most North-Western European countries did have sizeable
immigration but did not develop national integration policies until the turn of the
century. In the absence of national policies, many cities developed integration poli-
cies, to give just a few examples, Birmingham and Bradford in the UK, Berlin and
Frankfurt in Germany, Vienna in Austria, and the cities of Zurich, Bern, and Basel
in Switzerland (Penninx 2009).
Local integration policies became much more visible during the past decade.
Cities organized themselves internationally in networks. These networks have been
strongly supported and funded by the European Commission, and their activities
have been studied extensively, often at the networks’ or the cities’ own request.
Systematic comparison of local policies reveals significant variation in the framing
of policies and in the meaning of integration underlying local policies. Some initia-
tives, such as the Intercultural Cities Network, focus strongly on the cultural dimen-
sion of integration, using diversity as a strength and diversity management as a
strategy. Other cities have framed integration policies primarily as a socioeconomic
issue, using antidiscrimination and equality as strategies and mainstreaming as their
governance principle. Still other cities have stressed the participation dimension of
integration, looking at accessibility and opportunity structures, on one hand, and
active “citizenship” of immigrants, on the other. Some cities have even developed a
local concept of citizenship, as opposed to national citizenship.
Whatever the history of local integration policies or their basic orientation, ten-
sions have increasingly developed between the local and national levels. Some of
these tensions may be attributable to the different views on how to implement immi-
gration policies—restrictive or otherwise. For instance, how are government admin-
istrators to handle migrants’ illegality in practice? What are the consequences of
implementing restrictions on access to facilities and services in the domains of
employment, housing, education, and healthcare to combat illegal residence?
Friction may also arise on the new civic integration courses and the increased cul-
tural knowledge required for continued residence and naturalization. While national
policies may be quite ideological, local practitioners typically seek more feasible
solutions. Tensions also arise when the financing of integration facilities is at stake,
particularly when national policies prescribe new actions but fail to deliver the
financial and other resources needed to implement them.

EU Integration Policies

EU-level policies on migration are double-edged. EU citizens are granted full free-
dom of mobility within the EU, while common and restrictive immigration and
asylum policies apply to third-country nationals (TCNs). This duality, established
11 Analysis and Conclusions 195

from the very beginning with the 1999–2004 Tampere Programme, had three impor-
tant consequences for integration. First, integration policies at the EU level were
aimed exclusively at TCNs while immigrants from within the EU were viewed as
already integrated. Second, integration of TCNs was defined in a rather limited way
in the early phase. As noted in the introduction to this book, EU policies started
from the assumption that if the legal position of immigrants was equal to that of
national citizens and if adequate instruments were in place to combat discrimina-
tion, then integration processes could be left to societal forces. The third conse-
quence was that, unlike immigration policies, EU integration policies were defined
as non-binding, consensus policies, since national governments wanted to retain
sovereignty in key domains associated with immigrant integration.
In 2003, the European Commission formulated its first comprehensive and
explicit view on integration policies based on a conceptualization of integration as
a two-way process involving both immigrants and the receiving society. The Hague
Programme (2004–2009) and the Stockholm Programme (2009–2014) marked a
gradual expansion of the definition of immigrants’ integration, increasing the actors
and stakeholders involved and the issues covered. This definitional expansion
occurred along two main lines: an internal line and an external one.
The internal line encompasses two main national elements. First, more levels of
integration governance were activated within destination countries. In this context,
the networks of European cities that exchanged knowledge and best practices on
integration policies (see Scholten et al. 2015), all funded by the European
Commission, raised the visibility of local governmental actors. In countries such as
Spain, regional-level governments also profiled themselves as important policy-
makers in the field of immigrant integration. The conceptualization of and interests
around immigrants’ integration have differed, however, even across different gov-
ernment levels within the same country. Second, more and more stakeholders at all
levels became involved in and mobilized for policies, including migrant organiza-
tions, human rights organizations, NGOs, and social partners.
The external line of expansion of the definition of immigrants’ integration
occurred when actors and stakeholders in countries of origin came into the picture.
This happened in two ways, stemming from quite different sources and interests.
First, after the turn of the century new international initiatives—stemming from the
renewed Migration and Development (M&D) perspective—sought to establish a
regulatory framework for international migration that would render migration ben-
eficial for countries of origin and destination as well as for migrants themselves (see
King and Collyer in this volume). The Global Commission on International
Migration, the High-Level UN Dialogues on Migration, and the Global Forum on
Migration and Development created frameworks in which both countries of origin
and countries of destination were represented and their interests balanced and coor-
dinated. Both the EU and all major immigration countries in Europe were involved
in these international developments.
A second way in which countries of origin became involved derived from the
increased difficulty experienced by European countries in controlling and regulat-
ing immigration without the help of countries of origin (and of countries of transit
196 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

to Europe). Several European countries, such as Spain, established bilateral agree-

ments with countries of origin in which cooperation on admission and, particularly,
on return of irregular migrants was exchanged for development assistance or
improved facilitation of regular migration—often temporary—to Europe (Garcés-
Mascareñas 2012, 171–173). The terminology of co-development emerged in this
context, combining the renewed M&D perspective with the immigration and inte-
gration policy interests of European countries. The EU became increasingly
involved in such cooperation programmes, many of which included local govern-
ments and NGOs in countries of origin (see Chaps. 8 and 10 in this volume).
The renewed European Agenda for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals of
2011 proposed to anchor these two external lines of policy development in the inte-
gration agenda, thereby adding the countries of origin as a third key actor in the
process of immigrants’ integration. As stated in the Commission document,
‘Countries of origin can have a role to play (...) in three ways: (1) to prepare the
integration already before the migrants’ departure; (2) to support the migrants while
in the EU, e.g. through support via the Embassies; (3) to prepare the migrant’s tem-
porary or definitive return with acquired experience and knowledge’ (EC 2011, 10).
The first element responds to the pre-migration courses and requirements that some
European immigration countries have recently developed in order to anticipate inte-
gration of those still to be admitted. The second legitimizes and encourages support
for migrants from countries of origin during their stay elsewhere, a practice that
governments in countries of origin have developed more systematically in order to
bond with their compatriots abroad (see Østergaard-Nielsen in this volume). The
third seems to include in its euphemistical formulation only voluntary return of
legal migrants, as such referring primarily to the re-migration and development
theme. Yet, if we look at concrete policies and policy implementation, one might
readily assume that involuntary return of irregular migrants constitutes an important
part of this policy stream.
This brief analytic description leads us to a few general conclusions on the mean-
ing of integration in policies in Europe. The first is that integration policies—or
policies under the flag of integration—have developed at many levels of govern-
ment: at the national level; at the local level of cities and municipalities; in some
cases, at the level of (autonomous) regions or Länder; and at the supra-national level
of the EU. This last is a relative newcomer, but nonetheless an increasingly impor-
tant platform for all. This “multilevelness” is a characteristic that will be present in
the future.
The second conclusion is that—partly parallel to governmental multilevelness—
a multitude of stakeholders has become involved in integration as policy designers
and implementers. This includes not only governmental and quasi-governmental
actors but also and increasingly nongovernmental agents from immigrant collec-
tives, civil society in general, social partners, and NGOs.
Both the vertical multilevelness of policies and the horizontal involvement of an
increasing number and diversity of stakeholders bring more varied interests to the
policy table. Such different interests may not always be aligned, and may even
clash. They may also lead to quite different views on what integration is, what
11 Analysis and Conclusions 197

integration policies should promote, and who needs what assistance in the integra-
tion process. If multilevel governance is normatively defined as the process through
which policymaking and policy implementation is coordinated vertically between
levels of government and attuned horizontally across governmental and nongovern-
mental actors (see Scholten et al. 2015), we can then conclude that we have only just
started out, and that much more multilevel governance is needed in practice in the
field of integration.
Finally, our examination of the development of integration policies and defini-
tions of integration at the EU level enable us to place in context the shift from the
original definition of integration as a two-way process to the EU’s new definition of
integration as a three-way process. That shift finds its legitimation primarily in
efforts to bring together the policy activities of different parties (i.e., in countries of
origin and destination) in the different but related fields of integration, immigration
control, and M&D. Policies in these three fields had previously developed simulta-
neously but separately. It is the logic of policymaking—and not an evidence-based
scientific argument—that has guided this redefinition.

Integration from the Perspective of Origin Countries

The fact that it was primarily a policymaking logic that guided the redefinition of
integration from a two-way to a three-way process does not necessarily mean that
there is no scientific basis in support of such a shift. Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 sought
empirical answers to a number of questions relevant in this regard: How is integra-
tion viewed by actors in the countries of origin? To what extent and how do coun-
tries of origin contribute to immigrants’ integration? Can integration in the country
of destination be expected to contribute to development in the country of origin?

Migrants’ Transnational Activities

A first way of answering such questions is to look systematically from the perspec-
tive of migrants themselves. Transnational studies decouple the concept of integra-
tion from its unique immigrant and society of settlement frame, looking at it instead
as a process that takes place simultaneously in the country of settlement, (still) in
the country of origin, and possibly even within a transnational community that is
located in neither of the two.
Actors and policymakers within migrant receiving countries may not always
accept such a frame shift (and in the politicized contexts of Europe it may increas-
ingly be rejected). The double or triple orientation is also seen as problematic in
national(istic) thinking, which deems it “disloyal” to the nation and an “abuse” of
the welfare state. Moreover, energy spent in transnational activities may be per-
ceived and defined—based on a zero-sum assumption—as being at the expense of
198 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

integration efforts in the country of settlement. Nonetheless, from the perspective of

migrants, simultaneous integration and participation in these different worlds is not
problematic. Indeed, it is unavoidable, as Mügge’s inventory of transnational activi-
ties in Chap. 7 indicates. The assumption that a transnational orientation and activi-
ties may come at the expense of integration (efforts) in the country of settlement has
no basis in empirical research. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that trans-
national orientations and activities may co-exist with integration in the country of
settlement without negative effects on one another. Though conclusions are based
on a still limited number of case studies, for certain migrants transnational activities
and integration may even reinforce each other.
Mügge (in this volume) points out that the same capital that equips immigrants
for transnationalism may facilitate their structural integration in the receiving soci-
ety too. She observes that (i) economic integration of migrants in the settlement
country is an important condition for remittances; (ii) the more financial, social, and
political capital immigrants have (acquired), the more capable they may be of devel-
oping transnational activities; and (iii) political transnational activities are very
much shaped by the political opportunity structure of the country of settlement.
Alternatively, feelings of exclusion in the homeland may foster integration in the
host country while factual exclusion of migrants from politics in the homeland may
trigger more radical forms of transnationalism to change the situation in the home-
land. Either way, homeland developments seem to be decisive for the form and
direction of both integration and transnationalism.

Migrant Organizations, NGOs, and Local Governments

Transnational studies also demonstrate that more and more relations are developing
between countries of settlement and countries of origin at the local level, through
local authorities on both sides and through immigrant organizations. These studies
have found that immigrants identify more easily with the local level and that local
governments present themselves as more open to migrants’ transnational affilia-
tions. Van Ewijk and Nijenhuis, in Chap. 8, describe the efforts of local authorities
to promote engagement of migrants in international cooperation projects as a means
of positively impacting their integration in destination societies. This perspective
renders the concept of integration rather participatory with an important entrepre-
neurial component, which supposedly has a social function and promotes social
cohesion at the local level.
Van Ewijk and Nijenhuis also point to the mushrooming numbers of co-
development programmes, aimed at linking immigrants and immigrant organiza-
tions with hometowns in origin countries for the purpose of development projects.
These again seem clearly related to and embedded in integration policies at the
local level. While the literature seems to confirm a positive correlation between
engagement in international exchange programmes and becoming more active in
11 Analysis and Conclusions 199

the receiving society, the authors also conclude that the extent and nature of
local-to-local projects and relationships are very much dependent on policies and
available funding opportunities in destination countries.

Governments of Origin Countries

Sending countries have increasingly developed policies to bond with their citizens
abroad. Østergaard-Nielsen (Chap. 9) suggests that such policies involve the eco-
nomic/socio-economic, the political, and the cultural/religious dimensions, often in
combination. Motivations of origin-country governments for such activities may
vary but the integration of their citizens in the country of settlement can ultimately
only be a topic if the interests of the country of origin are served through its migrants.
The specific content of what integration then should mean was well expressed by
Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan, who during a visit in Germany called for a ‘better
integration of Turks in Germany’, meaning essentially better economic opportuni-
ties ‘but not assimilation’. These workers should, he said, continue to be ‘ambas-
sadors for Turkey’, to speak Turkish, to vote for him as the new President of Turkey,
to be good Muslims, and to contribute to the economic development of Turkey.
While the strengthening of upward social mobility of emigrants in their countries
of residence is usually interpreted as a win-win scenario for both sending countries
and immigrants, it is still difficult to assess the exact impact of sending country poli-
cies on both migrant transnationality and migrant processes of settlement. First, it is
difficult to determine to what extent emigrant state efforts to bond with their non-
resident citizens are directly responsible for migrant transnational practices related
to their country of origin. Second, it is difficult to determine the real impact of these
policies on immigrants’ integration in the societies of settlement. In both respects,
Østergaard-Nielsen (Chap. 9 in this volume) notes that emigrants and diasporas
may not immediately respond to sending countries’ outreach. Moreover, she
observes, it remains to be seen whether and to what extent European governments
actually do move away from the zero-sum discourse and securitization optic on
migrant transnationality towards the more integrated three-way approach envi-
sioned by the European Commission.

The M&D Nexus

The overall approach to migration and development seems to have fluctuated,

according to King and Collyer in Chap. 10. Different understandings abound of the
nature, forms, and processes of development, migration, and integration, in both
applied and in theoretical terms. History has been marked by a series of “pendulum
movements” from optimistic to pessimistic scenarios, depending more on the politi-
cal assumptions of the time than the concrete empirical evidence at hand. Since the
200 R. Penninx and B. Garcés-Mascareñas

late 1990, a new favourable context has been born, pushing an optimistic upswing of
the pendulum. The accompanying view is that migration could and should be turned
in a triple-win scenario for all: the countries of origin, the countries of destination,
and the migrants themselves. A number of elements has contributed to this perspec-
tive: the global acceleration of migration and shift to more fluid forms of mobility
(see Van Mol & De Valk in this volume), the rise of immigrants’ organizations in
both places of origin and destination (see Mügge, and Van Ewijk and Nijenhuis in
this volume), and the birth of an institutional framework at the global level within
which countries of origin have been drawn and developed clout (e.g., the Global
Commission on International Migration, the United Nations High-Level Dialogue
on Migration and Integration, and the Global Forum on Migration and Development).
But how and where does integration come into this M&D approach? In principle,
integration could come into the picture if we adopted the concept of transnational
mobility (instead of migration) and shifted the focus to migrants’ integration in the
place of origin, the place of destination, and possibly also the transnational com-
munity (instead of the classic framing of integration as a process involving migrants
and the receiving society). From this perspective, the settlement of immigrants
could be studied empirically in all of its dimensions (economic, social, cultural, and
political) to assess as an open question whether it results in immigrants’ integration
or the opposite. However, such a new approach to integration does not exist (yet).
From the M&D perspective, two concrete questions on integration then remain.
The first is how does integration impact on migrants’ capacity to stimulate develop-
ment in the countries of origin. Though much more research is still needed, some
studies show that (successful) integration in the destination country is not necessarily
a zero-sum game but rather a condition for successful integration in the country of
origin. Chapters 7 and 8 both reach this conclusion in very similar wordings. The
second question is what meaning does integration in the destination country have for
immigrants’ reintegration in the country of origin. Research presented in this volume
suggests that there are many patterns of return and reintegration, resulting from the
fact—among others—that integration is just one of the multiple factors that deter-
mine reintegration chances and challenges. The literature seems to suggest that a
return of failure (which can be interpreted as failed integration in the destination
country) might be a predictor of a failed reintegration, particularly when development
criteria are part of the reintegration concept. The so-called “return of innovation”
seems to correlate with previous successful integration in the country of destination.

From a Two-Way to a Three-Way Process Conception

of Integration

The European Commission has proposed a new way of looking at the integration
process of immigrants in European societies—though by “immigrants” the
Commission means third-country nationals (TCNs) only. The Commission’s shift in
thinking can best be understood within the logic of EU-level policy development on
11 Analysis and Conclusions 201

migration and integration and the M&D framework. Furthermore, creation of new
institutional structures—bilateral ones between emigration and immigration coun-
tries, as well as those at the EU level and globally—has led to new policy initiatives
by which different topics, actors, and interests have been brought to the table in
relation to each other. Although the outcome of these developments is still uncer-
tain, one could interpret them as a step forward towards better multilevel gover-
nance. It is questionable, however, to what extent these new policy developments
should go under the flag of integration policies targeting immigrants in European
countries.
We established that the political process has been the driving force behind the
incorporation of the countries of origin as a third actor in the concept of immigrants’
integration. There is no indication in the European Commission documents that
research or any form of academic advice played a role in the proposal and in the
argumentation used. When asked, researchers working in various subfields of immi-
gration, integration, transnationalism, and the M&D nexus could not determine on
an empirical basis the exact role of countries of origin in immigrants’ integration
and vice versa. What does clearly emerge is the relevance of integration for develop-
ment in the countries of origin. Furthermore, transnational studies point to the need
to look simultaneously at immigrants’ integration (or lack thereof) in the place of
origin, place of destination, and possibly also within a socially-relevant transna-
tional migrant community. From this perspective more research is needed to assess
whether and how these processes of integration relate to each other.

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Author Bios

María Bruquetas-Callejo is research fellow at the Institute of Migration and

Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam. She also works as an independent
consultant for various institutions, including the European Commission. She
received her PhD in sociology (2012) from the University of Amsterdam with a
thesis that dealt with the implementation of integration policies for immigrant stu-
dents in Barcelona and Rotterdam. Her research interests focus on the comparative
analysis of public policies, particularly those related to immigrant populations and
the welfare state.

Michael Collyer is reader in geography at the University of Sussex. His research

focuses on questions of migration and development, forced migration, and undocu-
mented migration, particularly in the Euromediterranean area. He has held visiting
positions at universities in Morocco, Egypt, Sri Lanka and the USA.

Jeroen Doomernik teaches the politics of migration, integration and asylum at the
Department of Political Science of the University of Amsterdam. His research is on
the same topics with a particular interest in multilevel policymaking and unexpected
and perverse policy outcomes.

Edith van Ewijk is senior researcher at Kaleidos Research, which is part of the
NCDO foundation. NCDO is a Dutch expertise and advisory centre for citizenship
and international cooperation based in Amsterdam. Van Ewijk completed her PhD
in 2013 on the topic of knowledge exchange and mutual learning in Dutch-Moroccan
and Dutch-Turkish municipal partnerships at the Department of Geography,
Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. She has
written a monograph and various scientific articles, as well as policy-oriented arti-
cles based on her dissertation. She currently works on a broad set of themes includ-
ing migration, global health, global public goods and the post-2015 agenda. Some

© The Author(s) 2016 203

B. Garcés-Mascareñas, R. Penninx (eds.), Integration Processes
and Policies in Europe, IMISCOE Research Series,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4
204 Author Bios

of her current works focus on making scientific research on international and

sustainable development accessible to a large audience in the Netherlands (she is
editor of www.oneworld.nl/research). She also has working experience as a junior
professional officer in Kenya, as a policy advisor in the Netherlands and as an inde-
pendent consultant.

Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas is visiting professor at the Department of Political and

Social Sciences of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. She graduated with
degrees in history and anthropology from the University of Barcelona and holds a
PhD cum laude in social sciences (2010) from the University of Amsterdam. Her
PhD thesis, which was awarded the Dutch Sociological Association (NSV) biennial
prize for the best sociological dissertation defended in the Netherlands, analysed
immigration policies in Malaysia and Spain. Blanca has also worked on immigra-
tion and integration policies in the Netherlands, on local integration policies and
political discourses related to immigration in Spain and, together with Sébastien
Chauvin, on a theoretical conceptualization of irregular migration from a compara-
tive perspective.

Marleen van der Haar is postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute for
Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen. At the Radboud Political
Science Department, she works on framing in policies and practices related to
immigrant integration and gender equality issues. Her work on category-making in
the context of gender and ethnicity has been published amongst others in the Journal
of International Relations and Development (2013) and Politics, Groups and
Identities (2013).

Russell King is professor of geography at the University of Sussex and also visiting
professor of migration studies at Malmö University. Between 1986 and 1993 he was
professor of geography at Trinity College Dublin, and he has held visiting appoint-
ments at the University of Malta, the University of Trieste, Ben Gurion University
of the Negev and Cornell University. His interests range across the entire spectrum
of migration studies, although most of his research has been Europe-based, with a
special focus on migration processes and transitions in Southern Europe and the
Balkan region. He has directed major research projects on international retirement
migration, international student migration and return migration. He was editor of
the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies between 2000 and 2013. Amongst his
recent books are The Atlas of Human Migration (Earthscan 2010), Remittances,
Gender and Development (I. B. Tauris 2011) and Counter-Diaspora: The Greek
Second Generation Returns ‘Home’ (Harvard University Press 2014), all co-
authored. In recent years he has published papers in many of the major journals in
geography and migration studies, including Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers; Geoforum; Population, Space and Place; Gender, Place and Culture;
Global Networks; Diaspora; Mobilities; International Migration; and Ethnic and
Racial Studies.
Author Bios 205

Christof Van Mol is postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary

Demographic Institute (NIDI, The Hague). He has an MA in history from the
University of Antwerp, Belgium; an international MA in migration studies from the
University of Valencia, Spain, and Lille Catholic University, France; and a PhD in
sociology from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is interested in the broad
field of migration studies with a particular focus on different forms and patterns of
intra-European mobility and migration. His latest book (Palgrave Macmillan 2014),
for example, focuses on intra-European student mobility.

Liza Mügge is assistant professor of political science. She was visiting scholar at
the Harvard Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (2012) and is fellow
at the Harvard Kennedy School Women and Public Policy Program (2014–2015).
Mügge has published on political representation, gender equality, intersectionality
and transnationalism. Her monograph Beyond Dutch Borders: Transnational
Politics Among Colonial Migrants, Guest Workers and the Second Generation was
published by Amsterdam University Press (2010).

Gery Nijenhuis is a human geographer and assistant professor of international

development studies in the Department of Human Geography and Planning, Utrecht
University, the Netherlands. Her research interests focus on the relationship between
international migration and local development in countries of origin, on transna-
tional activities of migrant organisations and on local governance of mobility.
Relevant publications include ‘Transnational activities of immigrant organisations
in the Netherlands: Do Ghanaian, Moroccan and Surinamese diaspora enhance
development?’ (Nijenhuis, G. and Zoomers, A., forthcoming July 2015); The State
and the Grassroots: Immigrant Transnational Organizations on Four Continents
(New York: Berghahn Books, edited by A. Portes and P. Fernandez-Kelly;
‘Embedding international migration: The response of Bolivian local governments
and NGOs to international migration’, Environment and Urbanization, 2010, 22(1):
67–79; and ‘Institutionalising international migrants’ activities: The impact of co-
development programmes’, International Development Planning Review, 2010,
32(3–4): 246–265 (with A. Broekhuis).

Eva Østergaard-Nielsen is associate professor in the Department of Political

Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She holds degrees in anthro-
pology and political science from Copenhagen University and a PhD in politics
from the University of Oxford/St. Antony’s College. Her research interests include
transnational politics of migration, political parties, and the transnational electoral
dynamics of external citizenship and migration and development. Østergaard-
Nielsen’s publications include Transnational Politics: Turks and Kurds in Germany
(Routledge 2003) and International Migration and Sending Countries (Ed., Palgrave
2003), as well as numerous chapters in edited volumes and refereed articles in jour-
nals such as Global Networks, International Migration Review, International
Journal of Regional and Urban Studies and Ethnic and Racial Studies. Her most
206 Author Bios

recent article is ‘Migration and the local transformation of overseas development

aid’ (forthcoming, with Miriam Acebillo) in Population, Space and Place.
Østergaard-Nielsen is a member of the editorial boards of Migration Studies,
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and the IMISCOE Research Series.

Rinus Penninx has been involved in the field of migration and settlement of immi-
grants in several capacities. His report Ethnic Minorities (1979) formed the starting
point for integration policies in the Netherlands. From 1978 to 1988 he worked in
Dutch ministries in research and policymaking on integration of immigrants in the
Netherlands. He founded the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the
University of Amsterdam in 1993 and was its director until 2005. From 1999 to
2009 he was co-chair of the International Metropolis project. He was coordinator of
the IMISCOE Network of Excellence (2004–2009) and the IMISCOE Research
Network (2009–2014). His major publications in English include Newcomers:
Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Netherlands 1550–1995 (with Jan
Lucassen, Het Spinhuis Publishers 1997); Immigrant Integration: The Dutch Case
(with Hans Vermeulen, Het Spinhuis Publishers 2000); Trade Unions, Immigration
and Immigrants in Europe 1960–1993 (with Judith Roosblad, Berghahn Books
2000); Western Europe and Its Islam (with Jan Rath, Kees Groenendijk, and Astrid
Meyer, Brill 2001); Citizenship in European Cities (with Karen Kraal, Marco
Martiniello and Steve Vertovec, Ashgate 2004); The Dynamics of International
Migration and Settlement in Europe (with Maria Berger and Karen Kraal,
Amsterdam University Press 2006); and Migration Policymaking in Europe (with
Giovanna Zincone and Maren Borkert, Amsterdam University Press 2011).

Peter Scholten is associate professor of public policy and politics at the Erasmus
University Rotterdam. His research focuses on themes of intercultural governance,
migration and integration policies and the relationship between knowledge and
power. Scholten is editor in chief of Comparative Migration Studies and, since
2014, associate director of IMISCOE, Europe’s largest research network in the field
of migration, integration and social cohesion studies.

Helga de Valk is theme group leader of migration and migrants at the Netherlands
Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI, The Hague) and professor of inter-
face demography at the Free University Brussels (VUB, Belgium). Her research
focuses on migration and integration, the transition to adulthood of immigrant
youth, educational inequality, union and family formation, the second generation,
intergenerational relationships in immigrant families, and European mobility.
Amongst her recent ongoing projects are the ERC starting grant project “Families
of Migrant Origin: A Life Course Perspective” (Familife) and the Norface-funded
“European Welfare States in Times of Mobility” (MobileWelfare) project. She has
published in a range of leading journals and books in the field of demography,
migration and family sociology. She is the acting editor in chief of the European
Journal of Population (EJP).