Using EU Indicators of Immigrant Integration - European ...

Indicators of the welcoming society could be usedto facilitate how public opinion and perception ofdiscrimination influence integration outcomes - alink which receives growing attention in research.Chapter 4:Migrant integrationand the Europe 2020The Europe 2020 Strategy is the European Union’sten-year growth strategy. It sets out overall targetsin the area of employment, education, environment,poverty and social exclusion. All MemberStates have committed to achieving Europe 2020targets and have translated them into nationaltargets and policies. The targets are coordinatedthrough monitoring, coordination and reporting inthe framework of the European Semester, a yearlycycle of economic policy coordination. The Europe2020 targets are relevant for immigrant integration,namely employment, early school leaving, tertiaryeducation, poverty or social exclusion.However, migrant integration has so far not sufficientlybeen mainstreamed into main EU policyareas despite the fact that there are wellfunctioningpolicy mechanisms in place. Only afew indicators used in these mechanisms havebeen disaggregated for immigrants even whendata allows for such break-downs. The outcomesof the Analysis Report can be used to incorporateimmigrant integration into the monitoring andtarget setting of established policy frameworks inemployment, education and social inclusion.Closing the gapThis report outlines relevant factors that influencemigrant integration to inform integrationpolicies at various levels of governance. Integrationpolicy often aims at closing the gap betweenimmigrants and non-immigrants in theEU. Providing equal opportunities for immigrantsand delivering specific support are importantbecause immigrants are a particular vulnerablegroup. Furthermore, society as a whole benefitsfrom closing the gaps between people with andwithout an immigrant background, in particularwhere and when immigrants are or become alarge part of the population.Between 10-15 % of the total population in EU-15 countries were foreign-born in 2010. Immigrantsare particularly overrepresented amongyounger age groups in many countries. Accordingto a Eurostat working paper on demographicprojections of the foreign-born population in EUcountries from 2010, the share of foreign-bornis likely to more than double by 2061. The mostconservative projection estimates that 26.5 % ofthe EU population would have a ‘foreign background’by 2061. By 2061, at least every thirdperson in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Germany,Greece, Luxemburg, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,and the United Kingdom is estimated to have aforeign background. As the relative importanceof immigrants in our society increases, the outcomesof migrant integration become more relevantfor where the general society is heading.If policymakers in a Member State want to reducethe number of students leaving schoolswithout a degree, they have to take into accountthe particular challenges of immigrants as theyrepresent a large share of new children in schoolin many countries. They then may wish to comparethis group with their peers without an immigrantbackground and control for gender andsocio-economic background.To illustrate the impact of effectively integratingimmigrants into the EU agenda, the projecthas calculated a ‘closing the gap-scenario’ usingseveral indicators as examples. The ‘closing thegap- scenario’ assumes equal outcomes of themigrant population in comparison with the totalpopulation. Based on this hypothetical scenario,we show the potential impact of complete convergenceof outcomes on overall improvementand on meeting the respective Europe 2020 targets(see annex for full list). 18Currently, the total employment rate in the EU is69 %. The employment rate for the foreign-bornis 64 %. The Europe 2020 target is to increase theoverall rate to 75 %. Closing the employment gapfor foreign-born immigrants accounts for 10.7 %of meeting the Europe 2020 target across all EUcountries for which targets and data are available.Given the ‘no gap scenario’, Austria, Germany, theNetherlands, and Sweden would half-way meettheir national Europe 2020 target (see annex).Member States could prevent half a million peoplefrom leaving school early, if they could close30(18) Our calculations are based on Eurostat data which is available online. We take the rates and population sizesfor 2010. The Europe 2020 targets are based on the National Reform Programmes of April 2011. Data was notavailable for Romania and Slovakia in most cases. These calculations could be done for a comparison betweenthe native born and foreign –born population.