Since , our Washington New Americans program has assisted more than 5, people in filling out their naturalization forms and taking the final step to becoming citizens. One of the most significant barriers to the civic, economic and cultural integration for immigrants and refugees is language.
OneAmerica is also spearheading local and national efforts to improve access to high quality workforce development and adult education strategies that support language learning for adults and their families, getting immigrants and refugees on a path toward prosperity. Brussels: European Commission. Migration Policy Group, Brussels. Public attitudes. Public opinion on Immigration. Share on. Related content. Global Migration Indicators Zipline or trap? How the gig economy may affect immigrant integration.
Liam Patuzzi and Meghan Benton 18 Mar Related blogpost. Related topic. Public opinion on migration. Read more.
The Orange County economy is strongest when more residents prosper. When immigrant communities can fully participate in the economic life of our county, the health and prosperity of our entire region will benefit.
Email Mary. Another type of naturalisation policy grants birthright citizenship to newborn children of immigrants. Avitabile et al. Immigrants — particularly those who are newly arrived — tend to settle close to their former compatriots. This might lead to the ethnic concentration and spatial segregation of immigrants. Policies can influence these settlement patterns, both indirectly, e.
Such policies have been implemented in countries including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Canada. There are several channels through which immigrant networks can affect outcomes. On the one hand, it is easier to preserve the original culture within the immigrant community. By interacting mainly with compatriots, immigrants might face lower incentives to acquire destination-specific skills. On the other hand, immigrant communities may provide a sheltered environment, share experiences and thus reduce the individual costs of economic and social integration.
The main challenge that researchers face in evaluating the effects of immigrant networks is that immigrants choose their residence based on their characteristics and needs: those in need of support or those for whom integration is particularly challenging might prefer to settle close to their ethnic community. The literature investigating the impact of ethnic networks on the economic outcomes of immigrants has so far produced mixed results.
Edin et al. The initial network effect is in particular strong for low- and medium-skilled immigrants, while it is close to zero for highly educated immigrants. In the longer term, the initial positive effect of a network on earnings disappears. Moreover, exposure to an ethnic network appears to lower wages and increases the likelihood of being mismatched in the job after several years of residence in Germany. Regarding social integration, the results have been similarly non-uniform.
Some research reports lower language skills for immigrants living in ethnic enclaves. Aydemir exploits the random allocation of refugees within Canada and finds that immigrants in ethnic enclaves tend to invest more in language and job-related training. Yet, Bisin et al. The effects are nonlinear, however, and only become significant at relatively high levels of co-ethnic concentration. Policies have some potential to influence the process of social integration.
There is some evidence that demographic integration, in particular for women, is mediated by better economic opportunities following naturalisation. The exact channels of the naturalisation effect are yet to be understood.
Overall, existing studies do not report strong negative results for the effect of ethnic networks on the social integration of immigrants. However, several research results warn of possible adverse effects in the longer term due to lower investments in human capital.
More research could be undertaken to investigate the network effect on various proxies for social integration in particular the development of values, trust, or social preferences and the acquisition of human capital , to study dynamic effects short- vs. While many studies have evaluated the role of the pre-existing network upon the arrival of immigrants, relatively few studies have looked at how the simultaneous arrival of immigrants or the growth of the network over time affects social integration.
In this survey, we reviewed the research evaluating naturalisation and settlement policies. We acknowledge the growing literature that looks at the effects of other immigration policies: access to work, 33 legalisation of irregular immigrants 34 and access to voting rights One particularly interesting area of research is to understand the interactions between economic and social integration as well as between different dimensions of social integration.
For instance, is employment and, hence, are policies that target economic integration sufficient for the social integration of migrants? Can social integration happen before economic integration and then facilitate the latter? Research investigating these links could contribute to the development of more efficient integration policies. Finally, while most of the studies so far have focused on analysing integration from the immigrant perspective, it is also important to understand how the same policies influence the native population and their attitudes and behaviour toward immigrants.
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