Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume 115, Issue 45, 2018, Pages 11483-11488

Multidimensional measure of immigrant integration (Article) (Open Access)

Harder N. , Figueroa L. , Gillum R.M. , Hangartner D. , Laitin D.D.* , Hainmueller J.
  • a Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
  • b Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
  • c Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
  • d Immigration Policy Lab, ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8050, Switzerland, Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8050, Switzerland, Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
  • e Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States, Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
  • f Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States, Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States

Abstract

The successful integration of immigrants into a host country's society, economy, and polity has become a major issue for policymakers in recent decades. Scientific progress in the study of immigrant integration has been hampered by the lack of a common measure of integration, which would allow for the accumulation of knowledge through comparison across studies, countries, and time. To address this fundamental problem, we propose the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) Integration Index as a pragmatic and multidimensional measure of immigrant integration. The measure, both in the 12-item short form (IPL-12) and the 24-item long form (IPL-24), captures six dimensions of integration: psychological, economic, political, social, linguistic, and navigational. The measure can be used across countries, over time, and across different immigrant groups and can be administered through short questionnaires available in different modes. We report on four surveys we conducted to evaluate the empirical performance of our measure. The tests reveal that the measure distinguishes among immigrant groups with different expected levels of integration and also correlates with well-established predictors of integration. © 2018 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords

Refugees Measurement Immigration Integration

Index Keywords

education perception immigrant refugee economics methodology Research Design human community integration immigration trends statistics and numerical data language Surveys and Questionnaires Humans migrant psychology classification Adolescent male Emigrants and Immigrants case report female questionnaire clinical article Article adult human experiment Social Perception
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85056115709&doi=10.1073%2fpnas.1808793115&partnerID=40&md5=93ef321382aae878cccf2773efa5cab0
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1808793115
ISSN: 00278424
Cited by: 3
Original Language: English