Evaluating Integration vs. Immigrant-Oriented Immigration Policy

speaker

Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, assistant professor of sociology, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, faculty fellow at Carolina Population Center, and external affiliate at Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (University of Washington)

She studies, writes, teaches, and speaks about many things, most of them in some way related to racism, White supremacy, markets, or urban/neighborhood inequality. Propelling it all is this aim: to do justice

Abstract

After reviewing integration-oriented vs. immigrant-oriented approaches to immigration policy in Europe, I examine how immigrant and native-born Swedish residents perceived and experienced a specific form of integration-oriented policy: immigrant integration support services facilitated through municipal organizations. These organizations aimed to foster social contact through planned encounters (e.g., language learning classes) and unplanned encounters facilitated by interventions in the built environment (e.g., an open design building with events and services that would be of interest to immigrant and native-born Swedes). I also examine how these individuals perceived segregated immigrant neighborhoods. 

Analyzing 37 in-depth interviews, I find that although immigrants found planned encounters beneficial—especially for language and cultural knowledge acquisition—these encounters and their benefits did not translate into long-term social relationships or socioeconomic mobility. I also find that despite their theorized relationship to unplanned encounters, interventions in the built environment did not facilitate social mixing. 

Finally, I find that many immigrant and native-born Swedish residents of immigrant-dense neighborhoods ascribed social value to the areas where they lived, emphasizing both their wish to continue living there and a need for the state to intervene in material deprivation, while non-residents persisted in stigmatizing these areas and would not consider moving there. I argue these results challenge the theorized relationship between immigrant and native-born social mixing and integration-oriented immigration policies. Instead, they highlight the urgency of ameliorating material inequalities between neighborhoods and centering immigrant perspectives in the policy-making process.