(In)visible generations: from integration to equality. Institute for European Studies Policy Brief Issue 2019/02

Despite growing criticism on extending the category ‘immigrant’ to children of immigrants, research in the field of migration studies generally distinguishes between different generations within the population of migrant descent. Those who migrated as adults are called ‘the first generation’, while children of immigrants who were born in the host country are labelled ‘the second generation’ and children of immigrants who migrated before or during their teens comprise ‘generation 1.5’. Even though these later generations are socialised in the host country, they are often still viewed as in need of integration and targeted by integration policies. In this policy brief, we discuss the particularities of ‘generations 1.5 and 2.0’ throughout Europe and join others in arguing that policymakers and scholars need to move beyond the integration paradigm towards a paradigm of equality. We suggest that an equality paradigm needs to take into account the specific inequalities that children of immigrants might face, but, at the same time, needs to be critical of the homogenising group designations that are assigned to them

The first year of implementation of the EU Action Plan on Integration: An evaluation of European policy coordination on migrant integration. Policy Brief Issue 2017/02 • July 2017

In June 2016, the European Commission launched the ‘EU Action Plan on Integration of third country nationals’. The Action Plan provides a common policy framework for integration policies in the Member States and aims to promote cooperation and policy coordination in the field of migrant integration. Due to the multilevel and cross-sectoral character of migrant integration, policy coordination is crucial to an effective policy strategy in this area of policymaking. In this policy brief, we take the one year anniversary of the Action Plan as an occasion to evaluate the role of the European Commission in European policy coordination on migrant integration. We discuss the relevant European tools for policy coordination that have been put into place over the last decade and recommend an evaluation of the effect of these tools on the policy responses and outcomes in the Member States

Mainstreaming or retrenchment? Migration-related diversity in Dutch and Flemish education policies

This article analyses how states adapt generic policies to the increasing diversity that characterises contemporary European societies. More particularly, it zooms in on how migration-related diversity is mainstreamed into education policies in the Netherlands and Flanders and why we observe different policy trends in these two cases. We find that the focus on migration-related diversity largely faded in Dutch education policies in the period from 2000 to 2014. In Flanders, this trend towards ‘migration-related diversity retrenchment’ is less prevalent during this period, even though a similar evolution has started to take place more recently. These findings present a puzzle, as the most evident explanation for diversity retrenchment, namely the increasing politicisation of migration and diversity, cannot account for this difference since the Netherlands and Flanders are characterised by similar degrees of politicisation of migration-related diversity. Our findings thus call for an exploration of underemphasised explanations for diversity retrenchment. We show that the diverging degree of diversity retrenchment can be explained by the presence or absence of a sub-state nationalist project and diverging degrees of neoliberal retrenchment policies. Sub-state nationalism seems to have temporarily offered a buffer against the neoliberal retrenchment of migration-related diversity.</p

The UK in Justice and Home Affairs: the engaged outsider. IES Policy Brief Issue 2016/6• April 2016

By bundling the manifold policy expertise of the researchers of the Institute for European Studies (IES), this paper forms part of a series of analyses investigating the potential implications of a ‘Brexit’ scenario for different EU policies. All papers ask the same three questions: 1) What is the state of the EU policy in focus? 2) What is the UK’s role/interest in this policy field? 3) What are the potential implications of a ‘Brexit’ scenario at the policy-level? After Claire Dupont and Florian Trauner introduce the project, Richard Lewis sets the historical and cultural context and explains how the UK and the EU have come to such a low-point in their relations. Next, five policy fields are analysed: justice and home affairs; free movement policies; EU external representation; the (digital) single market; and environmental policy

Inégalités intersectionnelles dans les politiques éducatives en Belgique

Alors que la recherche parle de plus en plus d'inégalités intersectionnelles et met en avant la nécessité d'adopter une approche intersectionnelle dans l'étude des inégalités scolaires et de la discrimination à l’école, peu de choses ont été faites jusqu'à présent pour étudier l'utilisation d'un tel cadre intersectionnel dans les politiques éducatives. Dans cet article, nous examinons si et comment les inégalités intersectionnelles à l’école sont abordées dans les politiques éducatives en Belgique, tant dans le système néerlandophone régi par le gouvernement flamand que dans le système francophone régi par la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

Monitoring the impact of doing nothing: New trends in immigrant integration policy

‘Mainstreaming’ has recently been considered as a possible new strategy for advancing immigrant integration in Europe. However, policy documents and current academic literature have hardly conceptualized what we label as ‘ethnic equality mainstreaming’. In this article, we lean on the widely available research on gender mainstreaming, to provide such a conceptualization of ethnic equality mainstreaming. Once conceptualized, we verify whether there is indeed a trend towards mainstreaming in Western Europe's old immigration countries. Our results show that there is no straightforward trend towards ethnic equality mainstreaming in these countries. However, the indicators that served to detect the existence of ethnic equality mainstreaming allowed us to uncover a new double and paradoxical trend in immigrant integration policies. This ‘new style’ immigrant integration policy can be depicted as follows: increasing ‘colourblindization’, in combination with ‘ethnic monitoring’. In other words, states increasingly monitor the impact of ‘doing nothing’.SCOPUS: ar.jDecretOANoAutActifinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Integrationspolitik in Belgien

Zum Mitnehmen ° Belgien ist seit 1920 ein Einwanderungsland, das ähnlich wie andere westeuropäischen Länder auf mehrere Einwanderungswellen zurückblickt. Knapp 30 Prozent seiner Bevölkerung ist heute ausländischer Herkunft.Davon stammt die Hälfte aus Staaten der Europäischen Union. ° Die Integrationspolitik in Belgien muss im Lichte der besonderen föderalen Struktur des Landes betrachtet werden. Von einem einheitlichen, belgischen Integrationsmodell kann nicht die Rede sein. ° Während die Einwanderungspolitik in der Zuständigkeit des Zentralstaates liegt, wurde die Integration in den 1980er Jahren Aufgabe der Regionen. In Flandern, Wallonien und Brüssel haben sich seither unterschiedliche Integrationsansätze entwickelt. ° Im flämischen Teil des Landes etablierte sich ein multikulturell ausgerichtetes Modell, das die Bedeutung ethnisch kultureller Vielfalten betonte. Im französischsprachigen Teil des Landes setzte sich in Anlehnung an Frankreich ein egalitäres, auf Assimilation ausgerichtetes Modell, durch. ° Trotz aller Unterschiede ist in den vergangenen Jahren eine Konvergenz der Politikansätze zu beobachten. In allen Regionen wurden mittlerweile verpflichtende Integrationskurse und -programme eingeführt. ° In beiden Teilen des Landes bleibt das schlechtere Abschneiden von Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund im Vergleich zu Einheimischen bei Bildung und Arbeit eine wesentliche Herausforderung für die Politik

Brussels is Tarred with Racism

This book chapter is about racism in Brussels. Although Brussels is characterized by a greatly diverse population, this chapter shows how the discrimination of people with a migration background are abundant in the Belgian Capital. The chapter shows how beyond the deliberate behaviour of individuals, there are more implicit and hidden kinds of racism, such as the ones produced by institutional bodies