Multidimensional measure of immigrant integration

Abstract

SignificanceWhile successful integration of immigrants and refugees is a goal for many host countries, scholarly assessment of progress toward that goal is hampered by the lack of an accepted measure of integration success. This study proposes a pragmatic, survey-based measure that identifies six dimensions of integration and then, through four surveys, examines the construct validity of the composite measure. The measure has the potential to advance scientific progress in the study of immigrant integration.

Becoming White: How Military Service Turned Immigrants into Americans

“…In this article, I focus on two key behavioral indicators of how integrated immigrants are into their new host societies: citizenship and intermarriage with native-born individuals. These indicators capture how well incorporated an immigrant is into the new national community both politically and socially (Harder et al 2018). Moreover, they reflect the interaction between native-born individuals and immigrants in a way that moves beyond "cheap talk. "…”

“…2 Within the context of American history, integration into national culture has been explicitly and implicitly tied up with race, ethnicity, and, specifically, "whiteness" (Gordon 1964;Ignatiev 1995;Smith 1999;King 2000). As the sociologist Milton Gordon points out, integration into 2 Immigrants can still be "successful" without shedding their previous identities (Harder et al 2018). This process of integration is perhaps much more relevant for modern contexts in which the rhetoric and concept of assimilation is hotly contested.…”

Measuring integration in new countries of immigration

“…Many studies simply avoid using or proposing a definition of the term. Other studies mention the complex nature of the term, others cite its complex nature and wide use in both research and policy, thus explaining this lack of a common understanding of the term (Puma, Lichtenstein, and Stein 2018;Harder et al 2018;Bauböck and Tripkovic 2017).…”

“…their connection with the host society), the economic dimension includes areas such as income and employment, the political dimension captures the political and civic participation, the social aspect seizes the social ties, the linguistic one measures the ability to use the local language, and the navigational one refers to the management of the basic needs in the host country. As in other studies, Harder and his colleagues use a number of indictors which together are clustered in a integration dimension (OECD/EU 2015, 2018Huddleston et al 2015;Harder et al 2018;Puma, Lichtenstein, and Stein 2018). Their 12 items scale is the short version and a 24 items scale is the long version, with 2 and respectively 4 indicators asked for each of the 6 areas of integration 3 ‡ .…”

“…Among them, the most pressing ones were about the pressure on social and educational services, the rise of far right and xenophobic social movements, the burden put on the destination countries which had previously little experience with immigrant integration, or the needs migrants have during the integration process. As some scholars have suggested, the study of immigrant integration has tried but partially failed to provide definitive answers to these questions due to, among other issues, the lack of common understanding and measure of immigrants' integration (Puma, Lichtenstein, and Stein 2018;Harder et al 2018;Bauböck and Tripkovic 2017).…”