Foreword
This publication presents a comprehensive international comparison of the integration outcomes for immigrants and their children in OECD, EU and selected other countries. 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 and OECD countries.
This publication is the fourth edition of a series that started in 2012 with an OECD pilot report, followed by two joint EU/OECD editions in 2015 and 2018. It draws on the data and information gathered in the three last editions and the broader work on integration issues carried out by the OECD’s International Migration Division. It also benefited from data provided by Eurostat, the European Commission, 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 statistical offices who provided valuable support in the data collection for this report.
Chapter 1 introduces the issues involved, a comparative overview of integration outcomes and a focus on the evolution of integration outcomes over time. It also presents a classification of countries with similar immigrant populations. Chapter 2 presents contextual information on immigrant populations, including socio-demographic characteristics and composition of the households, compared with those of the native-born, as well as a number of immigrant-specific characteristics like category of entry, duration of stay, and region of origin.
Against the background set out in Chapters 1 and 2, the remainder of the publication goes on to consider actual indicators of integration. Immigrants’ skills and labour market integration are described in Chapter 3 It thus examines levels of education, language skills and participation of the immigrant population in training, their labour market outcomes, as well as the quality aspects of immigrants’ jobs. Immigrants’ ability to reach standard living conditions is described in Chapter 4. It considers several aspects of living conditions: household income, housing conditions, as well as health status and access to healthcare. Chapter 5 looks at the civic engagement of immigrants, such as access to nationality and voting. It also focuses on their social integration: to what extent they are actively involved in the host society, if they perceive any discrimination and the general host-society attitudes towards immigration and their integration.
This publication also includes three special-focus chapters dedicated to present integration outcomes of specific groups. Chapter 6 focuses on the integration of elderly immigrants and very old migrants, that is, foreign-born above the age of 64 and above the age of 74, respectively. Chapter 7 looks at the integration of young people with foreign-born parents. Chapter 8 discusses the integration of third-country nationals i.e. non-EU nationals living in the European Union and European OECD countries and examines outcomes measured on the basis of the EU “Zaragoza indicators” of integration.
This publication has been drafted by Yves Breem (project manager), Alina Winter and Helen Ewald, under the co-ordination of Thomas Liebig (OECD); and Luca Barani (DG Migration and Home Affairs Unit C2 “Legal Pathways and Integration”, European Commission). Jongmi Lee provided statistical assistance. The publication also benefited from contributions by Luca Barani and Elisabeth Kamm as well as several members of the Secretariat International Migration Division. Ken Kincaid provided the editing, and Dominika Andrzejczak, Charlotte Baer and Lucy Hulett publication support.
It benefited from comments by Jean-Christophe Dumont, Mark Pearson and Stefano Scarpetta (all OECD), Aikaterini Dimitrakopoulou and Ursula Honich (DG Home), by European Integration Network National Contact Points, as well as from several officials from other DG Home Units.