What is a Workable Immigrant Integration Policy and How Can It be Measured?, Maastricht - Hoofdinhoud

Target group

The seminar is primarily aimed at public officials from national, regional and local authorities of the EU Member States and candidate countries, officials from EU institutions and international organisations, as well as policy-makers, practitioners and researchers.

Description

The issue of how best to integrate immigrants is a central policy challenge across Europe and OECD countries; following the economic crisis it is also one of the utmost concerns of national governments. The seminar will take a comparative and multi-dimensional approach to the socio-economic integration of immigrants and their children. It will also examine what and how to measure and communicate the results in a meaningful way so as to better support the monitoring of immigrants’ situation and design new integration policies and targets. With one of the objectives of integration policy being to develop societies in which newcomers feel welcome, as outlined in the Stockholm Programme, policy-makers should thus expect to see successful stories according to which they can rate their own levels of achievement.

Benchmarking is not an easy process. If it is carried out incorrectly, it will also lead to misleading conclusions. Thus, it is crucial to identify appropriate and telling indicators where immigrant integration is linked with the EU headline targets and flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020, and in particular those on employment, education, social inclusion and active citizenship.

Methodology

This seminar will be based on a mixture of presentations, case studies and practical sessions. It will stimulate active participation as well as the sharing of experiences and dilemmas faced when implementing integration policies. Background documentation will also be provided in an online/e-Learning set up. Speakers will include MPG, ICMPD staff, practitioners, and officials from the OECD.

Objectives

This training will contribute to:

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  reporting on the availability and quality of comparative data from agreed harmonised sources, necessary for the calculation of these indicators;
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  demonstrating the value of using and comparing indicators for policy-making;
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  mainstreaming integration indicators into the EU, national targets and priorities of Europe 2020 and enforcing better coordination among ministries;
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  promoting the exchange of experiences of and feedback from practitioners on assessing the impact of immigrant integration policies.

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