Towards empirical comparison of immigrant integration across nations

ABSTRACT

The ambitious attempt by Richard Alba and Nancy Foner to provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of immigrant integration across several immigration nations – namely the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands – concludes that low-status immigrant groups are marginal across all of these countries, and overall none of them stands out as particularly positive or negative. At the same time, some countries perform better than others on specific dimensions of integration, offset by less-favourable results on others. Dimensions examined include employment and economic mobility, overall economic well-being, residential inclusion, overcoming marginality based on race and religion, access to citizenship and political power, education for the children of immigrants, inter-group marriages and identification with the national society. The complexity of the analysis is daunting, and troubled in some aspects by empirical and methodological issues. The effort nonetheless moves the field forward substantially, and defines a new agenda for future research.