Migration Policy Group Newsletter

Does a Southern European Model of Migrant Integration Exist? A Comparative Longitudinal Study across 15 European Countries (2010-2019)

In a MIPEX research paper published in Social Policies, Giacomo Solano, MPG’s Head of Research, and Irene Ponzo, Deputy Director of Forum of International and European Research on Immigration (FIERI), challenge the assumption that integration policies of Southern European countries are homogeneous and weaker than those of traditional EU countries of immigration.

Their findings suggest that integration policies of Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) differ and are not systematically weaker than countries in Northern and Western Europe.
These are long-standing trends, as the situation of the analysed countries has not changed dramatically over the decade, despite the 2008 Great Recession and the European refugee crisis.

The research is based on the MIPEX dataset on migrant integration policies including data from 15 European countries over the period 2010-2019.

Return migration governance: MPG’s partner project FAiR receives EU funding

FAiR, a project in which MPG is a partner, has received funding from Horizon EU, an EU research and innovation funding programme.

The objective of FAiR is to strengthen EU return migration governance by addressing the legitimacy deficits in policies on return migration and alternatives to return.

FAiR complements dominant rational choice perspectives by systematically assessing the importance of norms, frames and shared meanings for intergovernmental cooperation on return.

In partnership with 10 other international stakeholders, FAiR gathers data from 5 non-EU+ countries (Georgia, Iraq, Niger, Nigeria, Turkey) and 5 EU+ states (Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Switzerland).

MPG’s role in this project is to develop and improve measurements of Europe’s return policies through a Migration Return Policy Index (MIREX) and pilot it in 10 different countries.

MIPEX cited by the National Bank of Belgium on the influence of integration policies on the labour market and immigrant inflows

The National Bank of Belgium has recently cited MIPEX in a working paper on migrant integration policies and their consequences on the labour market and migratory inflows.

According to the working paper, MIPEX results demonstrate that countries with developed integration policies do not necessarily have greater migrant employment rates.

The report further mentions that these findings can be explained because various types of policies can, in fact, have the opposite effect.