Evaluating Policies of Immigrant Integration and Their Outcomes: A Critical Assessment from a Multilevel Perspective

Section organized by the ECPR Standing Group on Migration and Ethnicity During the last decades, the integration of migrants and their offspring in home and host countries has become an increasingly salient topic not only in political discourses, but also at the societal level. Consequently, the necessity of ensuring an efficient migration governance and diversity management has progressively entered the agenda of local, national, and supranational political actors. This Section aims to provide a critical analysis of the design, implementation, outcomes and outputs of policies targeting migrant populations in Europe and beyond. The Section closely examines the complexities of immigrant integration policies from a multilevel perspective, by paying attention to how this topic is addressed at the local, regional, and international levels. Scholars contributing to this Section will analyze the recent transformations of immigrant integration policies with the aim of identifying their dynamics of convergence and divergence, critically assessing their effectiveness, investigating their consequences, and facilitating the understanding of the role of social and political actors which can facilitate/hinder the implementation of integration policies. Furthermore, the Section also addresses the multidimensional nature of these policies that cuts across a multitude of phenomena and perspectives from political, social, cultural and economic angles around which broader empirical studies and theoretical considerations are offered in order to provide a comprehensive study of this subject.