Previous research has identified intermarriage as an important factor in immigrant integration, but what affects immigrants’ willingness to intermarry or support intermarriage? A significant and understudied aspect of attitudes toward intermarriage among immigrants is the role of religion. We focus on a particular group of immigrants, Bhutanese refugees, for whom religious persecution featured prominently in their forced migration and resettlement in the US. Using an individual-level survey, we explore factors affecting their attitudes toward intermarriage. Specifically, we analyze the impact of social interactions, socioeconomic conditions, and demographic factors on resettled Bhutanese refugees’ attitudes toward intermarriage. Results indicate that, in addition to age, income, and English proficiency, resettled refugees who spend more time interacting with individuals from outside of their own ethnic, cultural, and religious group are more likely to support intermarriage. Social interactions may allow refugees to overcome religious restrictions and advance refugee integration into American society through intermarriage.

This article distinguishes isolationist and integrationist accounts of the legal-economic nexus. Isolationists deny the possibility of integrating different theoretical perspectives, while integrationists try to unify different accounts. Leading legal theorists have recently presented isolationist efficiency-, liberty-, and democracy-centred accounts of the market. It is argued that the legal–economic nexus is an integrationist concept, requiring an integrationist understanding of the constitutive role of law in the economy – a common view within the Law and Political Economy movement. Two integrationist strategies are presented: structural integrations and epistemic translations. Using them, an integrated consumer-centric account of the market is offered: consumers are not mere instruments; they are the lead actor, with all the entitlements in terms of powers, rights, and responsibilities that this position of authority entails.

This article argues that power–dependence relations are a crucial dimension of analysis to understand how states navigate between realist and liberal logics and particularly between the balancing and integration strategies. Specifically, I distinguish between three types of power–dependence relationships: limitation, neutralisation, and competition. Limitation and neutralisation make the balancing strategy viable by allowing power to offset dependence and thus preserve the autonomy of the state. On the other hand, when limitation and neutralisation are no longer workable, particularly in the case of cross-temporal interdependence, the balancing strategy becomes unreliable, and integration tends to become an attractive alternative. In the case of competition between a state’s different sources of dependence, the loss of flexibility brought about by integration may prove costly by limiting the state’s ability to address various dependencies simultaneously. Empirically, I illustrate these mechanisms by showing that post-war European integration started as a response to a situation of cross-temporal interdependence between France and West Germany, which tended to make the limitation and neutralisation strategies unreliable. However, military integration was later hindered by the tension between competing sources of dependence for France, which increased the cost of the loss of flexibility entailed by military centralisation.

The European constitutional navigation of the noughties succeeded to stipulate that European integration had ushered European society (Article 2 TEU). This choice remains underexplored. In light of current European uncertainty, the contribution explores meaning and promise of European society. The concept can counter the Europeans’ incomprehension of their union by integrating their heterogeneous European experiences into one familiar notion. It shows their conflicts as normal and possibly productive, occurring in one society rather than between discrete Member States. It suggests to understand their democracy as a principled struggle for compromise. Not least, European society substantiates the EU’s new principled constitutionalism that goes against excesses of the ‘will-of-the-people’ approach.

This paper questions whether asylum seeker integration is promoted through inter-organisational relationships between non-profit and voluntary organisations (NPVOs) and government agencies. It focuses particularly on the role of NPVOs in service delivery (co-management) and in the delivery and planning of public services (co-governance). It presents a research study on the public services provided to asylum seekers in Glasgow and asks the following questions: What role do NPVOs play in the planning and delivery of public services? When planning and delivering public services, to what extent do NPVOs work across organisational boundaries and what kind of relationships exist? And in practice, what makes inter-organisational relationships work? This paper offers new empirical evidence and also contributes to the theoretical debate around the integration of asylum seekers.

Drawing from 41 qualitative interviews with Norwegian voluntary football clubs and local public stakeholders, this paper explores whether voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) are a convenient measure for including refugees in society. The following research questions are addressed: what expectations of refugee inclusion initiatives do local stakeholders hold towards voluntary sport clubs, and how do the clubs grapple with pursuing non-sport and sport objectives and systems simultaneously? The results show that the football clubs face high expectations of refugee inclusion. Although the football clubs generally understand and accept the expectations, inclusion and integration activities are costly in terms of time and competence and challenge the club’s capacities. Two competing logics are identified in the data: a functional logic passively welcoming everyone that are keen and resourced to play football and a moral and proactive logic, that expects the clubs to reach out to include refugees that are alien to the organization of indigenous sport. We find that despite external expectation, the sport clubs are not fast-tracks to refugee integration because the logic sustaining their existence and practices are at odds with the logic prescribing refugee integration through sport.

Immigrant volunteering is a disputed topic. For some scholars, an important instrument for the social integration of immigrants, while others frame immigrant volunteerism as a regime of 'ethical citizenship' centred around the paradigms of 'civic integration' and 'deservingness'. Our research collected the experiences of hundreds of migrant volunteers in Italy (658 questionnaires plus 89 in-depth interviews) to address three research questions in particular: immigrant volunteers' levels of social inclusion, their reasons for volunteering, and the links between volunteering and other forms of social and political participation. Our findings show that volunteering is more dependent on social integration than on social marginality, represents a way to achieve a higher level of social integration, and can be framed as a way to perform active citizenship and anti-xenophobic claims. In particular, volunteering allows immigrant to present themselves as active subjects, oppose demeaning stereotypes, and express political commitment. Ultimately, this substantiates a form of citizenship ‘from below’ that re-writes the script of citizenship and enriches it with new ideas of entitlements and belongings.

In this paper, we address the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Italy with regard to the integration of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees (MRAs) in the labour market. The paper analyses the role played by CSOs in practice, looking at the dynamics of demand and offer of services through the perspective of both the CSOs and MRAs. To achieve this, we combine qualitative data from semi-structured interviews to CSO representatives as well as MRAs. Our findings point out that the fragmentation of the policy framework in terms of employment and integration, and an unfavourable legislation (above all, migration law) shape the kind of prevalent activities of CSOs and negatively impact the potential for integration of MRAs in the labour market. In general, much is left to the single CSO to fill in the needs of MRAs beyond minimal provisions established by law, with just asylum seekers and refugees having better opportunities and support. Furthermore, we can also observe how economic migrants generally tend to be less supported.

We investigate the role of domestic legal infrastructures on Member State behavior at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Article 234 cases from 1961 to 2006. The ECJ issues preliminary rulings on the interpretation of European Union (EU) law when requested to do so by national judges, which promotes consistent application of EU law within national legal orders as well as a larger legal discourse about the scope and boundaries of integration. Scholarly interest in Article 234 observations arises from the consequences of these cases for both Member State compliance and European integration. Using a new data set of Member State observations, we demonstrate that the number of observations submitted by non-party Member States is affected by the strength and weaknesses of domestic legal infrastructures that facilitate cases being brought before the Court.

This study investigated a multilevel, multisector governance model regarding the incorporation of Eritrean asylum seekers in Tel Aviv, from perspectives of both Israeli civil society organization (CSO) professionals and asylum seekers, through semi-structured interviews, using a qualitative phenomenological design. The research revealed a complex interplay among governmental agencies, local authorities, and CSOs in negotiating legal actions and resource allocation. This interaction ranges from integration initiatives by the municipality and CSOs to separation and exclusion policies at the government level, and results in only partial integration, or “incorporation,” into Israeli society. While the government maintains significant influence over migrants’ lives, the municipality must balance governmental decrees, native-born residents’ opposition, and human rights commitments. Likewise, CSOs navigate a dual role of municipal cooperation and opposition. Over time, all stakeholders have recognized CSOs as an essential component of the interdependent governance structure. The findings illuminate how this multilevel and multisector framework shapes asylum seekers incorporation by community strengthening, education, and social and legal services. Despite maintaining dominant authority, the central government frequently engages in deliberative governance with municipalities and CSOs.

Immigration is one of the most widely debated issues today. It has, therefore, also become an important issue in party competition, and radical right parties are trying to exploit the issue. This opens up many pressing questions for researchers. To answer these questions, data on the self‐ascribed and unified party positions on immigration and immigrant integration issues is needed. So far, researchers have relied on expert survey data, media analysis data and ‘proxy’ categories from the Manifesto Project Dataset. However, the former two only give the mediated party position, and the latter relies on proxies that do not specifically measure immigration. The new dataset presented in this article provides researchers with party positions and saliency estimates on two issue dimensions – immigration and immigrant integration – in 14 countries and 43 elections. Deriving the data from manifestos enables the provision of parties’ unified and unfiltered immigration positions for countries and time points not covered in expert surveys and media studies, making it possible to link immigration and immigrant integration positions and saliency scores to other issue areas covered in the Manifesto Project Dataset. Well‐established criteria are used to distinguish between statements on (1) immigration control and (2) immigrant integration. This allows for a more fine‐grained analysis along these two dimensions. Furthermore, the dataset has been generated using the new method of crowd coding, which allows a relatively fast manual coding of political texts. Some of the advantages of crowd coding are that it is easily replicated and expanded, and, as such, presents the research community with the opportunity to amend and expand upon this coding scheme.

Recent immigrants seldom join the ranks of volunteers for various social causes. Immigrants from former socialist countries have been shown to be particularly averse to organized forms of volunteering for reasons rooted in their past, including forced forms of collectivism imposed by the state. In this qualitative study, we explored the perceptions and practices of volunteering among ex-Soviet immigrants (mostly educated middle-aged women) who ran a project for the benefit of elderly. Our findings show that most volunteers chose causes targeting fellow immigrants, their resettlement and well-being, and were motivated by the wish to build co-ethnic support network and overcome marginalization in the Israeli society. Other volunteers were driven by the need for self-actualization in the context of underemployment and occupational downgrading. Personal empowerment and higher identification with the receiving society were the most salient outcomes of volunteering for our informants. We conclude that for some immigrants, volunteering can serve as a strategy of social integration.