Local and State Politics of Immigration

Author(s):  
Monica W. Varsanyi

When it comes to immigration policy, nation-states generally have the power to exclude, admit, or expel noncitizens from their territories. On the other hand, subnational jurisdictions have more often been given the task of formulating and implementing immigrant policy, which entails the incorporation of immigrants into local communities. This division of labor has recently come under intense scrutiny. The local and state politics of immigration and immigrant integration in the United States has been documented in the scholarly literature, focusing on topics such as California’s Proposition 187, the disparity between the national benefits and local costs of immigration, and the increasing role played by nongovernmental organizations and other nonstate actors in the integration of immigrants at the local scale. Four categories of local immigrant and immigration policy have been studied: policies that arise from the devolution of select powers over noncitizens; grassroots policies on areas such as education and human trafficking; policies that are more explicitly about a politics of immigration control; and policies that engage with a politics of immigrant integration. However, there are still avenues that require further investigation so as to better understand the growing involvement of subnational governments in the formulation and implementation of immigrant and immigration policy. For example, more research is needed in which policy outcome is taken as the dependent variable and to document and understand the dynamics of local immigrant integration and immigration policy formation in developing countries.

Author(s):  
Dariya Logvinova ◽  

Quebec's historical experience in the field of immigrant integration has always been relatively positive, and mass immigration has received significant support among the population. The special Quebec model of immigration policy deserves international attention and is relevant for study. However, the success of the management of immigration processes is only partially related to policy, and this cannot simply be transferred to another context, other countries, so the issue needs to be considered more broadly. So, the article examines the economic and social integration of immigrants in Quebec, the impact of immigration on social cohesion in the province, the economic situation for new immigrants and the second generation (their children), as well as the relevance of Quebec society discrimination and racism, the general attitude of Quebec residents to the immigration situation in the province. Having studied the specifics of integration policy in Quebec, we will try to conclude whether this policy is effective enough, whether it has some shortcomings, if so, what exactly and how it is possible to correct them. Is the deep and procedurally soft social integration of immigrants one of the results of this policy success what is the level of influence of the policy of multiculturalism on a fairly strong social cohesion? We will also try to find out whether there has been some progress in economic integration, as well as how Quebecians feel about the influx of immigrants to the province and how immigrants themselves evaluate their decision to move to Quebec, and answer the question: why racism or discrimination is minimal in Quebec, compared to the United States and many other European countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (45) ◽  
pp. 11483-11488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas Harder ◽  
Lucila Figueroa ◽  
Rachel M. Gillum ◽  
Dominik Hangartner ◽  
David D. Laitin ◽  
...  

The successful integration of immigrants into a host country’s society, economy, and polity has become a major issue for policymakers in recent decades. Scientific progress in the study of immigrant integration has been hampered by the lack of a common measure of integration, which would allow for the accumulation of knowledge through comparison across studies, countries, and time. To address this fundamental problem, we propose the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) Integration Index as a pragmatic and multidimensional measure of immigrant integration. The measure, both in the 12-item short form (IPL-12) and the 24-item long form (IPL-24), captures six dimensions of integration: psychological, economic, political, social, linguistic, and navigational. The measure can be used across countries, over time, and across different immigrant groups and can be administered through short questionnaires available in different modes. We report on four surveys we conducted to evaluate the empirical performance of our measure. The tests reveal that the measure distinguishes among immigrant groups with different expected levels of integration and also correlates with well-established predictors of integration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-438
Author(s):  
Gabrielė Čepeliauskaitė

Immigrant integration policy is one of the most important issues in political discourse and is likely to remain so in the future. The article investigates the effectiveness of immigrant integration policy formation in Lithuania. According to  theoretical insights, the general idea of integration includes the national reorganization of social and political areas for the inclusion of new immigrants, when legal, social, cultural and political rights are deliberately expanded for the immigrants in the host country. The analysis of legal documents reveals that the EU-level European Migration Agenda (2015) sets common priorities focusing on highly skilled workers, when at the same time Immigration Policy Guidelines (2008) determines general directions and principles of immigrant integration at the national level. It is necessary to highlight the point that the document does not set a specific goals, objectives, measures or evaluation criteria of immigration policy. The quantitative Eurostat (2016), European Migration Network (2017) and Statistics Lithuania (2004–2017) data analysis showed that among the EU member states Lithuania's attractiveness for immigrants is low and the implementation of immigration policy can not create a counterweight to the aging population and large emigration. In conclusion, the Immigration Policy Guidelines (2008) provided at national level are not sufficiently specific and clear to ensure effective integration of immigrants in Lithuania.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.17.3.21956


Author(s):  
Jeannette Money

The research on comparative immigration policy is relatively recent, with the earliest dealing with significant immigrant inflows into Western Europe after World War II. Because of the difficulties in finding empirically grounded measures of immigration policy, the literature has grown primarily by adding to the theoretical literature. In terms of the immigration control literature, nativism (anti-immigrant preferences) has been complemented by approaches that include attention to the economic consequences of immigration, focus on how societal preferences are channeled, and focus on state national interest and state security. In terms of the immigrant integration literature, there has been a tendency to classify the immigrant reception environment of states according to historical nation building features of the state and to types of “immigration regimes.” More recently, in recognition of the static nature of these models of policy making, scholars have disaggregated integration policy into its component parts and incorporated aspects of politics that change over time. The research arena is, in short, theoretically rich, though both dimensions of research on immigration policy suffer from two flaws. The first is the inability to compare effectively policies across countries. The second is the research focus on Western Europe and advanced industrial countries, to the neglect of the remaining countries in the world.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Clark

The term 'welcoming community' has arisen within the field of immigration studies as a concept that seeks to address ways in which communities welcome and integrate immigrants. This paper explores the concept of a welcoming community and its impact on the social integration of immigrants to smaller centres, specifically to the City of St. John's in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, using a social inclusion framework. Through an examination of the integration policies and programs undertaken in the Province and how immigrants interact with these services. I find the elements of a welcoming community exist in St. John's and that immigrants' frequency and intensity of contact with institutions that directly support settlement is high in St. John's. However, it is premature to conclude, given the recent implementation of the immigration policy in the Province and low numbers of contacts made with other institutions, that St. John's is a welcoming community and that this translates into successful social integration.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Clark

The term 'welcoming community' has arisen within the field of immigration studies as a concept that seeks to address ways in which communities welcome and integrate immigrants. This paper explores the concept of a welcoming community and its impact on the social integration of immigrants to smaller centres, specifically to the City of St. John's in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, using a social inclusion framework. Through an examination of the integration policies and programs undertaken in the Province and how immigrants interact with these services. I find the elements of a welcoming community exist in St. John's and that immigrants' frequency and intensity of contact with institutions that directly support settlement is high in St. John's. However, it is premature to conclude, given the recent implementation of the immigration policy in the Province and low numbers of contacts made with other institutions, that St. John's is a welcoming community and that this translates into successful social integration.


Author(s):  
Luca Sebastiani

Over the past decade the European Union has witnessed a process of increasing discursive production, as well as the development of soft policy tools around the concept of integration —thus occupying a political space which had been previously an exclusive domain of nation states. This paper focuses on the most significant moments of the aforementioned process, dealing with the most influential stakeholders involved in it and with their different perspectives, standpoints and strategies. By adopting a qualitative perspective and a deconstructive approach, it shows the way in which the currently hegemonic concept of integration is closely conditioned by a «Home Affairs approach» and linked to immigration-control policies. Far from being the necessary outcome of a predetermined dynamics, this situation is rather the overall result of the «moves» made by situated actors. 


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-376
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER NOONAN

This article examines the debates around anarchist restriction that shaped the eventual passage of the Immigration Act of 1903 and argues that domestically oriented conceptions of national security are both challenged and constituted by transnational and international processes and currents. While discussions of transnational immigration control became important features of both scholarly discourse and popular debate in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001, these discussions were not new. Similar debates about immigration policy, security, and civil liberties shaped discussions between the mid-1880s and early 1900s, when an unprecedented wave of attacks against heads of state fed rumors of wide-ranging conspiracies, and reports of anarchist outrages in cities far and wide spread fear. Anarchist exclusion was far more than an example of a rising nativist tide raising all boats and excluding a widening spectrum of undesirable aliens. Such measures set the foundation for restriction based on political beliefs and associations that, over subsequent decades, would become critical to suppressing political dissent. Consequently, understanding how the fear of anarchist violence helped shape the contours of the domestic and diplomatic debates over anarchist restriction is critical as these old questions of transnational immigration control reemerge.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (19) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Elisa Ortega Velázquez

This article asserts that according to international law, immigrants do have rights as a minority, and in abiding by their international obligations, States are obligated to implement policies that safeguard these rights and, in this way, facilitate the integration of immigrants into the host society. However, there are a number of elements that make the practical enforcement of these rights and the implementation of such policies rather complex. Thus, a series of international law provisions are first reviewed so as to be able to establish the foundations of our views. Secondly, we summarize and analyze the main trends of integration policies in three of the main Western immigration countries: Canada, the United States and the Netherlands, in order to broadly present the actions and results. Lastly, we conclude that immigrant integration projects fail to respect immigrants’ rights as a minority and that more effort should be made to comply with the international obligations States have assumed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-270
Author(s):  
Rachel Busbridge

Australia is often held up as an exemplary multicultural society in cross-national comparisons, particularly in relation to the integration of immigrants. Yet, this ‘grand narrative’ of Australia’s multicultural success risks an over-simplified picture of the dynamics of integration in Australia, obscuring dimensions on which Australia’s performance is comparatively poor. Juliet Pietsch’s Race, Ethnicity and the Participation Gap makes a valuable contribution to a more nuanced discussion, asking why the political participation of non-European ethnic and immigrant minorities in Australia is so low compared to Canada and the United States. This review article brings Pietsch into critical conversation with two recent books on comparative integration in North America and Western Europe: Richard Alba and Nancy Foner’s S trangers No More and Gulay Ugur Goksel’s Integration of Immigrants and the Theory of Recognition. Read alongside each other, these texts encourage deeper reflection on where Australia sits on a variety of indicators of immigrant integration as well as how integration is conceptualised in Australia. This article thus contributes to existing literature on the contemporary state of Australian multiculturalism, while also pointing towards directions for future research.


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