Settling In 2018
Indicators of Immigrant Integration
This joint OECD-European Commission publication presents a comprehensive international comparison across all EU and OECD countries - as well as selected G20 countries - of the integration outcomes of immigrants and their children, using 74 indicators based on three strands: labour market and skills; living conditions; and civic engagement and social integration. To place the comparison in its proper context, the publication also provides detailed data on the characteristics of immigrant populations and households. Three special-focus chapters are dedicated to examining gender issues, youth with a migrant background, and third-country nationals in the European Union.
Composition of immigrant populations and households
The societies of countries in the OECD and the European Union have been shaped by successive waves of immigration. Their scale and composition vary widely across countries. A number of socio-demographic factors drive integration outcomes. They include age, gender, family structure, living conditions, and geographical concentration. In addition to such factors, which also apply to the native-born, there are certain immigrant-specific determinants like category of entry, duration of stay, and region of origin. A grasp of how they differ from country to country and how immigrants compare to the native-born is a prerequisite for understanding integration outcomes.Reasons for emigrating have a particularly strong bearing on economic integration. Most labour migrants, for example, have a job waiting for them on arrival, which is generally not the case for family and humanitarian migrants. An immigrant’s country of origin also matters, as the standard of its education system and how its labour market operates may impact the integration outcome in the host country. Another important factor is how long immigrants have lived in the host country, since integration takes place over time. It takes time, for example, to learn the host-country language, to understand how the host country’s labour market and public services function, just as it takes time to build networks. This chapter starts by looking at the sizes of immigrant populations (Indicator 2.1) and their geographical concentration (Indicator ). It then considers their age- and gender-related composition (Indicator ) as well as differences in fertility and partnership practices by country of birth (Indicator ). The chapter then analyses the foreign-/ native-born balance of households (Indicator ) and their family make-up (Indicator ). The chapter then addresses key immigrant-specific factors, such as the composition of immigration flows by category of migration (Indicator ), length of stay, and the regions of origin of the immigrant population resident in the European Union (Indicator ).