Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) - How to strike a balance between mainstream and targeted efforts for immigrant integration in Europe?

How to strike a balance between mainstream and targeted efforts for immigrant integration in Europe?

07/14/14 • 26 min

Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)

Liz Collett and Milica Petrovic from the Migration Policy Institute give a talk The UK debate has been obsessed with numbers, limits and caps since 2010, and arguably a generation. This misses the real story of immigration: how immigrants integrate into society. When do migrants cease to be migrants? The integration story is a complex one but its importance cannot be understated: whether or not groups are successfully included will ultimately shape immigration policy. MPI Europe has been interested in what governments can do to encourage such a process. In the UK, policy responsibility for integration is diffused through a range of national and local government agencies, often with unclear or overlapping mandates. In contrast, countries in mainland Europe, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, tend to resource specialised actors within government that design and manage integration policies in isolation from mainstream policy, with clear targets and tailored interventions. As policy-makers in these countries grapple with the need to infuse integration priorities into mainstream policy portfolios across government, what can be learned from the British experience, and vice versa?

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What is the role of NGOs in the assisted voluntary returns of asylum seekers and irregular migrants?

Derek McGhee and Claire Bennett, University of Southampton, give a talk for the COMPAS Breakfast Breifing series Citizens may be broadly in agreement with government immigration policy and acknowledge the consequent logic of illegality and deportation, but its actual practice can be deeply unsettling, challenging liberal respect for physical integrity and freedom of choice. State funded ‘Assisted Voluntary Return’ (AVR) programmes seem to resolve these contradictions and are on the increase across Europe. Returnees are not subjected to outward mechanisms of enforcement (handcuffs, guards, etc.) but rather ‘choose’ to return and are granted a support package to reintegrate. NGOs are becoming heavily involved in these programmes, and in the UK the entire programme is implemented by a refugee charity, Refugee Action. This briefing draws on ‘Tried and Trusted ? the Role of NGOs in the Assisted Voluntary Return of Refused Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants’ a joint research project between the Centre for Population Change, University of Southampton and COMPAS, Oxford University. It discusses how ‘choice’ is understood in the context of state enforced destitution and ‘illegality’. Does AVR make immigration enforcement more acceptable in liberal democracies? Does the focus on choice mean we miss questions of justice? How do NGOs implementing the programme negotiate these tensions? Can NGOs maintain independence when funded by governments? Does this relationship open space for weighty advocacy’ or are NGOs simply ‘doing the government’s dirty work’? These issues are also discussed in relation to detention centres, where the Home Office has recently removed access to AVR. AVR is a laboratory for the development of new forms of co-operation between states and NGOs.

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undefined - The fundamental social rights of irregular migrants under the European Social Charter: Central or marginal to their access to services in Europe?

The fundamental social rights of irregular migrants under the European Social Charter: Central or marginal to their access to services in Europe?

COMPAS Seminar Series Trinity 2014- Borders of the welfare state: Exploring the tensions between migration enforcement and welfare state entitlements he European Social Charter (ESC) is the socio-economic 'sister' instrument of the ECHR. The text of the ESC contains a comprehensive list of social rights, which are generally binding on the vast majority of European states, and its provisions have exerted a considerable influence over the development of national and EU legal standards (including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights). However, a tension exists between the universal nature of these rights and the limited personal scope of the ESC, which in general exempts irregular migrants from its scope of protection. The European Committee on Social Rights (ECSR), the body which interprets the ESC, has tried to bridge this tension by setting out a minimum floor of social protection which should apply to all irregular migrants, in decision such as Defence of Children International v Netherlands. However, states have resisted this interpretation of the ESC, and it remains to be seen whether this minimum floor of basic social rights protection will become an effective means of guaranteeing irregular migrants access to essential services across Europe.