Foreword
This publication presents a comprehensive international comparison across all EU and OECD countries, as well as of selected other G20 countries, of the integration outcomes for immigrants and their children. It is the fruit of a co-operation between the European Commission (DG Migration and Home Affairs) and the OECD’s International Migration Division, as part of a regular monitoring of comparable indicators of integration across EU, OECD and G20 countries.
This publication is the third edition of an OECD series that started in 2012 with the OECD publication Settling In: Indicators of Immigrant Integration and draws on the data and information gathered in the first two editions as well as the broader work on integration issues carried out by the OECD’s International Migration Division. It also benefited from data provided by Eurostat, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the IOM Migration Research and Training Centre (MRTC), as well as specific data requests to EU and OECD countries. This publication would not have been possible without the support of the Delegates to the OECD Working Party on Migration and national statistics offices who provided valuable support in the data collection for this report.
Chapter 1 introduces the topics and provides a scoreboard of outcomes. It also presents a classification of countries which share similar immigrant populations. Chapter 2 presents contextual information on immigrant populations, including socio-demographic characteristics compared with those of the native-born; specific factors related to the immigrant population (such as countries of origin and length of residence) and information on the composition of immigrant households, compared to native-born households.
Against the background set out in Chapter 2, the remainder of the publication goes on to consider actual indicators of integration. Chapter 3 looks at key indicators of immigrants’ skills and labour market integration. It examines immigrants’ levels of education, language skills and participation in training, in addition to their labour market outcomes, as well as the quality of their jobs. Chapter 4 examines several aspects of living conditions: household income, housing conditions, as well as health status and access to healthcare. Chapter 5 addresses immigrants’ civic engagement and their social integration. Selected measurable aspects of social cohesion, such as sense of belonging to one’s country of residence, voting behaviour (for those naturalised), perceived discrimination, as well as host-society attitudes towards immigration are presented.
This publication also includes three large special chapters. Chapter 6 looks at gender differences. Chapter 7 examines the integration of young people with a migrant background. Chapter 8 presents a monitoring of EU “Zaragoza indicators” for third-country nationals – i.e. non-EU nationals living in an EU country.
This publication was written by Yves Breem and Cécile Thoreau together with Elisabeth Kamm, under the co-ordination of Thomas Liebig. Claire Rossi-De Vries and Jongmi Lee provided statistical assistance. The publication also benefited from contributions by Laurent Aujean, Rhea Ravenna Sohst and Elin Törnblom Duthu. Ken Kincaid provided the editing, and Véronique Gindrey, Lucy Hulett, Anna Tarutina and Joanne Dundon publication support.
It benefited from comments by Laurent Aujean (DG Migration and Home Affairs) and from Jean-Christophe Dumont, Mark Pearson and Stefano Scarpetta (all OECD) as well as from several officials from EU FRA.