This book aims to further the understanding of migration processes and policies in a European context with a particular focus on evaluating integration and the gendered aspects of migration, integration and citizenship. Integration is regarded as a contested concept and as entailing a variable and problematic set of discourses and practices.

This book aims to further the understanding of migration processes and policies in a European context with a particular focus on evaluating integration and the gendered aspects of migration, integration and citizenship. Integration is regarded as a contested concept and as entailing a variable and problematic set of discourses and practices.

This volume demonstrates that migration- and diversity-related concepts are always contested, and provides a reflexive critical awareness and better comprehension of the complex questions driving migration studies. The main purpose of this volume is to enhance conceptual thinking on migration studies. Examining interaction between concepts in the public domain, the academic disciplines, and the policy field, this book helps to avoid simplification or even trivialization of complex issues. Recent political events question established ways of looking at issues of migration and diversity and require a clarification or reinvention of political concepts to match the changing world. Applying five basic dimensions, each expert chapter contribution reflects on the role concepts play and demonstrates that concepts are ideology dependent, policy/politics dependent, context dependent, discipline dependent, and language dependent, and are influenced by how research is done, how policies are formulated, and how political debates extend and distort them. This book will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners in migration studies/politics, migrant integration, citizenship studies, racism studies, and more broadly of key interest to sociology, political science, and political theory.

This book aims to further the understanding of migration processes and policies in a European context with a particular focus on evaluating integration and the gendered aspects of migration, integration and citizenship. Integration is regarded as a contested concept and as entailing a variable and problematic set of discourses and practices.

An up-to-date and comparative look at immigration in Europe, the United States, and Canada Strangers No More is the first book to compare immigrant integration across key Western countries. Focusing on low-status newcomers and their children, it examines how they are making their way in four critical European countries—France, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands—and, across the Atlantic, in the United States and Canada. This systematic, data-rich comparison reveals their progress and the barriers they face in an array of institutions—from labor markets and neighborhoods to educational and political systems—and considers the controversial questions of religion, race, identity, and intermarriage. Richard Alba and Nancy Foner shed new light on questions at the heart of concerns about immigration. They analyze why immigrant religion is a more significant divide in Western Europe than in the United States, where race is a more severe obstacle. They look at why, despite fears in Europe about the rise of immigrant ghettoes, residential segregation is much less of a problem for immigrant minorities there than in the United States. They explore why everywhere, growing economic inequality and the proliferation of precarious, low-wage jobs pose dilemmas for the second generation. They also evaluate perspectives often proposed to explain the success of immigrant integration in certain countries, including nationally specific models, the political economy, and the histories of Canada and the United States as settler societies. Strangers No More delves into issues of pivotal importance for the present and future of Western societies, where immigrants and their children form ever-larger shares of the population.

This book provides solid empirical evidence into the role that countries and communities of origin play in the migrant integration processes at destination. Coverage explores several important questions, including: To what extent do policies pursued by receiving countries in Europe and the US complement or contradict each other? What effective contribution do they make to the successful integration of migrants? What obstacles do they put in their way? This title is the second of two complementary volumes, each of which is designed to stand alone and provide a different approach to the topic. Here, renowned contributors present evidence from the studies of 55 origin countries on five continents and 28 countries of destination in Europe where both quantitative and qualitative research was conducted. In addition, the chapters detail results of a unique worldwide survey of 900 organisations working on migrant integration and diaspora engagement. The results draw on an innovative methodology and new approaches to the analysis of large-scale survey data. This examination into the tensions between integration policies and diaspora engagement policies will appeal to academics, policymakers, integration practitioners, civil society organisations, as well as students. Overall, the chapters provide empirical evidence that builds upon a theoretical framework developed in a complementary volume: Migrant integration between Homeland and Host society. Vol. 1. Where does the country of origin fit? by A. Unterreiner, A. Weinar. and P. Fargues.

This book traces Latin American migration to Europe since the 1970s. Focusing on Amsterdam, London, and Madrid, it examines the policies of integration in a comparative perspective that takes into account transnational, national, regional and local levels. It examines the entire mechanism that Latin American migrants confront in the European cities they settle, and provides readers with a theoretical framework on integration that addresses the concepts of multiculturalism, interculturality, transculturality and transnationalism. This work is based on rich qualitative data from in-depth interviews, focus groups and participant observation complemented by a substantial documentary and legislative analysis. It reveals that current policies are limited and migrants are excluded in most of the formal venues for integration. In addition, the book shows the many ways that migrants negotiate the constraints and imperatives of integration. In Western Europe today, immigrants are largely assuming the entire responsibility of their integration. This book provides readers with much needed insight into why European integration policies are not responding to the needs of immigrants nor to society as a whole.