C. Bonifazi, D. Gabrielli, G. Sciortino - Strozza Italy in the European landscape

Italy in the European landscape

Corrado Bonifazi | IrppsDomenico Gabrielli | Istat Giuseppe Sciortino | Università di TrentoSalvatore Strozza | Università Federico II

Defining integration

• What is integration? It is a polysemantic concept, used in different ways and with different meanings.

• Integration has become the key concept to describe the consequences of migration processes only in the last decades.

• Until the early ‘70s the conceptual categories were: assimilation, absorption, acculturation, inclusion, incorporation .....

Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

The emergence of ‹integration› in the North-american debate

• The notion of assimilation starts to be criticized during the ‘60s, with the “discovery” of the heterogeneity of a society, characterised by deep cultural differences between groups. ‹Assimilation› is accused to have an implicit reference to the life-style of the white middle class.

• The new concepts of integration and inclusion are meant to stress the acceptance of groups with different cultures.

• Assimilation and integration are not always in contrast: integration implies socio-economic assimilation.


Segmented assimilation

• A good example of the new understanding of the complexities of integration processes is provided by the ‹segmented assimilation theory› proposed by Portes and Rumbault.

• This scheme assumes there are many different path that immigrant groups may travel to adapt to the new society. They may follow the traditional model and assimilate into the white middle class. Alternatively, they might follow a less prosperous path and assimilate into the underclass. Finally, they might attain upward mobility through the maintenance of a tight-knit immigrant community.


Integration in the european debate

• European debate on integration is more recent: integration issues started to appear in the political debate only at the end of the ‘70s, with the change of immigration from temporary to permanent.

• It reflects a different migration history.

• Attempts to define different “National models” (France vs Germany vs UK) (Brubaker, Castles).

• Three main dimension of integration: socio-economic, political and cultural.

• An emerging concept: civic integration (Joppke)


The construction of a system of Indicators of Immigrant Integration in the EU

• Immigration and integration issues have acquired an increasing importance in the EU during the ‘90s.

• The Hague Programme (2004) stressed the importance of evaluating integration policies. The Common Basic Principles on Integration (CBP) adopted by the EU Council in 2004 stated the need to "develop clear goals, indicators and evaluation mechanisms in order to adjust policy and evaluate progress on integration”.

• These results were confirmed by the ministerial conferences of Potsdam and Vichy (2007 and 2008).


The zaragoza declaration

• The Stockholm Programme (2009) called for the "development of core indicators for monitoring the results of integration policies in order to increase the comparability of national experiences.

• The conclusions of the expert meeting held in Malmö (2009) presented the results of a process to identify European core indicators.

• Finally, the Zaragoza Declaration stated “To promote the launching of a pilot project with a view to the evaluation of integration policies, including examining the indicators proposed ..”


Measuring integration in Italy

• In the early 1990s, some scholars began to focus on integration, providing a general overview of the situation based on information taken from field surveys.

• It was already clear that integration could be viewed from several perspectives, that there were different ways of collecting the necessary data and information, and that there were specific methodologies and data-analysis techniques that could be adopted.


The experience of the commission for immigrant integration policies

• The Commission recommended moving towards what it called a ‘reasonable’ model of immigrant integration.

• Based on their conceptual definition of integration, the Commission identified the various aspects that were to be tackled by the design of an adequate system for measuring the level of integration of immigrant groups and categories. It was pointed out that not all the measures proposed could actually be achieved at the time, both for lack of data or for the poor quality and reliability of the data available.


After the commission

• Some attempts were made by Fieri to implement these proposals. In particular, it proposed a critical review of the available data and analysed the integration of foreigners in the Italian regions and in the four largest metropolitan provinces.

• Another line of research based on available official data was developed by CNEL and Caritas, which has published a Report on ‘Indices of Integration of Immigrants in Italy’ since 2002.


Recent developments

• Since the early 1990s a question on citizenship and/or country of birth had been inserted into the questionnaire of the most important national sample surveys, but only in the last decade data on the subset of foreigners have been considered reliable.

• LFS since 2005; in 2008 special section on migrant integration.

• In 2009 EU-SILC on household with almost a foreign member.

• New survey on ‘Condition and social integration of foreign citizens’.


Local surveys

• A powerful tool of sampling: the sampling trough aggregation centers.

• The experience of ISMU in Lombardy.

• The National survey on the consequences of the 2002 regularisation (2005) (30000 foreigners).

• PERLA survey on employment of foreigners (16000).

• Recently, ISMU coordinated a national research project on ‘Measuring the level and differential characteristics of integration in some areas 2008’ which involved 20 local research units (12000).


To conclude ………. Some proposals

• Several important developments in the implementation of monitoring systems of migrant integration.

• Analysing integration on different levels, considering its nature of dynamic and multidimensional process with important territorial differences.

• The importance of target populations: foreigners, immigrants, populations with foreign or immigrant background .....

• Improve the reliability of National surveys for these population sub-groups.

• Introduce longitudinal or retrospective surveys.

• Promote local surveys.


C. Bonifazi, D. Gabrielli, G. Sciortino - Strozza Italy in the European landscape

Education

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