Conceptualizing and Measuring Immigration Policies: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

In the last decade, researchers have developed many innovative ideas for the construction of indices measuring immigration policies. Methodological considerations have, however, been largely absent from the discussion. To close this gap, this paper investigates the characteristics of existing indices by critically comparing and discussing them. We start by providing a definition of immigration policy which may serve as a benchmark when assessing the indices. By means of the analytical framework developed by Munck and Verkuilen (2002), which we adapt and customize for our analysis, we then evaluate the conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation, as well as the empirical scope of thirteen immigration policy indices. We discuss methodological strengths and weaknesses of the indices, how these affect the research questions that can be answered and what the next steps in index building within the field of immigration policy should be.

Conceptualizing and measuring migration policy change

“…Thus, the database disregarded policy discourses and the implementation of policies. This decision to focus on the legal aspects of migration policies has been adopted by most major policy databases (such as Mayda and Patel 2004;Ortega and Peri 2012;Bjerre et al 2014;Gest et al 2014), while other, more qualitative research projects have investigated the implementation of policies on paper (Infantino 2010;Eule 2014). To a limited extent, DEMIG POLICY included contextual information such as parliamentary debates, policy strategies, and action plans wherever it seemed relevant to understand the broader context in which decisions were taken.…”

“…Recently, several database initiatives have aimed at measuring absolute levels of restrictiveness. The Immigration Policies in Comparison project (IMPIC) compares immigration policies in 33 OECD countries over the 1980-2010 period along a range of pre-defined indicators (Bjerre, Helbling, Römer, and Zobel 2014). Ruhs' database (Ruhs 2011) covers 46 high and middle-income countries but is limited to policies regulating labour migration in one year 2009.…”

A New Agenda for Immigration and Citizenship Policy Research

“…Many of these databases have been developed for individual projects and have therefore been put together with very specific research questions in mind. This is most apparent in the immigration policy field, where data sets are not even accessible for other researchers (Bjerre, Helbling, Römer, & Zobel, 2015).…”

Legal status diversity: regulating to control and everyday contingencies

“…Channels and categories, however, gain salience as they are increasingly used to measure and make sense of migration. Student migrants, economic migrants, refugees, family migrants are commonly referred to channels that have attracted a body of research and a body of regulations specifically pertaining to them (Bjerre et al 2015). They also imply categories of difference.…”

“…Each category generally subsumes multiple immigration/ legal status tracks and as I discuss in the next section each track is associated with more or less specific conditionalities of entry and parameters of presence that arise out of immigration rules pertaining to external (at the border) and internal (once across the border) regulations (Bjerre et al 2015). In addition it is important to note that the degree of legal status diversity, if measured by the number of available tracks, differs by national context as do national approaches to managing migration (Gest et al 2014;Morris 2001).…”