Starting out: New migrants’ socio-cultural integration trajectories in four European destinations

Abstract

Migration trends are highly dynamic and the recent period has seen a transformation of migration to Europe. Studies of existing migrant stocks provide only limited information on these new migration flows and their implications for receiving societies. In the Norfacefunded SCIP project ('Socio-cultural integration processes among New Immigrants in Europe'), about 8000 recent migrants to four European destinations were surveyed soon after their arrival with many re-interviewed about 1.5 years later. The goal of the project was to obtain a more complete picture of integration processes in Europe and of the role of individual traits, group characteristics and reception contexts.SCIP data shed light on a dynamic phase in migrants' integration that has important implications for what happens later in the adaptation process. Furthermore, these data reveal the extent to which differences in integration patterns are apparent from the very beginning of migrants' stay or evolve over time. The SCIP project is comparative on the group and country level and thus helps to clarify whether differences in country-specific integration patterns reflect characteristics of host country institutions and ethnic boundaries -or can be attributed to the particularities of the immigrants these countries attract.This special issue demonstrates the potential of the data by bringing together six articles that tackle migrants' early adaptation, for example their language acquisition, the role of religiosity in finding a job, group differences in identification and acculturation, and experiences of discrimination across contexts. It also gives an insight into some limitations of the data set, describes the methodological challenges and possibilities in using it, and aims to inspire further research based on this unique data source.

Integration Needs and Support Offered: The Effects of Support on Young Spaniards in Germany

“…For instance, the German government has designed several measures to support the integration of newcomers, particularly in the fields of language acquisition and participation in the labour market (Heckmann and Wiest, 2015;Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik Regarding the former, a growing body of literature is dedicated to diverse aspects of migrants' integration into the EU, which also comprises the incorporation of intra-EU movers into other EU countries (Crul and Schneider, 2010). While some studies concentrate on labour market integration (Luthra, 2013), others particularly focus on cultural integration (Diehl et al, 2016). That migrant communities are often heterogeneous and that their overall incorporation often proceeds in procedural and uneven ways has been found, for instance, in countries like France (Algan et al, 2013) and the UK (Manning and Georgiadlis, 2013).…”

Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification

“…We draw on data from a unique dataset produced in the international survey project on Sociocultural Integration Processes among New Immigrants in Europe (SCIP) (see further Diehl et al 2016). The SCIP project is a two-wave cross-national panel study of migrants from selected national origins, who were first surveyed in 2010/11.…”

Design and implementation of a high-quality probability sample of immigrants and ethnic minorities: Lessons learnt

“…For example in Germany the recent immigrant and refugee supplements to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) sampled from register data (Brücker, Rother, and Schupp 2016), while register data was used for identifying not only country of origin but also time of arrival for the Dutch and German samples for a study of recent immigrants in the Socio-Cultural Integration among New Immigrants Project (SCIP) (Gresser and Schacht 2015;Diehl et al 2016). The linking of register information allows Statistics Netherlands to draw samples for social surveys based on the whole Dutch population and for specific subpopulations (Schmeets 2015).…”

“…As a result there has been a proliferation of studies, both national and cross-national, surveying specific immigrant or immigrant-origin populations. Some of these have focused on the second generation or the children of immigrants, such as the Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) (Crul and Schneider 2010;Hornstra, Groenewold, and LessardPhillips 2012) or the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU 2016); others have targeted those who are theoretically interesting given their recency of arrival (e.g., the SCIP survey; Diehl et al 2016), and others have focused on populations of particular interest, such as Muslims or Poles (e.g., the 2004 Muslims in Europe (ME) study; Drinkwater and Garapich 2011). The two European Union minorities and discrimination surveys (EU-MIDIS and EU-MIDIS2) aimed to evaluate the extent of exclusion and discrimination faced by immigrants and minorities across Europe (European Union Fundamental Rights Agency 2009).…”