Making Sense of Public Policy on Refugee Integration

Date01 July 2020
DOI10.1177/0002716220941577
Published date01 July 2020
AuthorElizabeth Ferris
Subject MatterSense-Making and Policy-Making
200 ANNALS, AAPSS, 690, July 2020
DOI: 10.1177/0002716220941577
Making Sense
of Public Policy
on Refugee
Integration
By
ELIZABETH FERRIS
941577ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYMAKING SENSE OF PUBLIC POLICY ON REFUGEE INTEGRATION
research-article2020
While immigrant integration is increasingly important
for policy-makers, governments of countries approach
the challenge of integration differently. In this article, I
frame the issue of migrant/refugee integration in the
larger context of political debates and policies about the
entry of refugees and migrants. I then go on to analytic
comparison of refugee integration policies in eleven
developed countries, focusing on the interrelated
domains of citizenship, language acquisition, and
employment. These three domains are interrelated:
acquiring language skills facilitates employment and (for
most countries) is required for citizenship. I find consid-
erable variation across these countries, which reflects
their different historical contexts, but also the different
policy choices that have been made in the countries.
Even within the European Union, there is considerable
variation between Member States in the emphasis they
place, for example, on employment of refugees. While
the study focuses primarily on policies developed at the
national level, I conclude by stressing the importance of
local initiatives to support refugee integration.
Keywords: integration; refugees; migrants; policy
This article compares the policies of eleven
developed countries with respect to the
integration of refugees. This introductory section
places the issue of integration policy in the broad
context of national policies toward refugees—
an increasingly hot political issue in all of the
countries studied—and examines the components
and determinants of integration policy.
The arrival of a large number of asylum seekers
and migrants on the borders of developed
countries in the last five years has triggered
Elizabeth Ferris is a research professor in the Institute
for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown
University. She has written extensively on humanitar-
ian issues, including Consequences of Chaos: Syria’s
Humanitarian Crisis and the Failure to Protect, with
Kemal Kirsici (Brookings Institution Press 2016) and
Refugees, Migration and Global Governance:
Negotiating the Global Compacts (with Katharine
Donato; Routledge 2019).
Correspondence: Elizabeth.Ferris@georgetown.edu
MAKING SENSE OF PUBLIC POLICY ON REFUGEE INTEGRATION 201
great interest in these countries’ governmental policies to admit—and to deter—
the admission of refugees to their countries. From U.S. efforts to strengthen the
border wall and sharply reduce refugee admissions to European efforts to deter
the arrival of asylum seekers to Australia’s draconian measures to prevent boats
carrying asylum seekers from landing on its territory, we are living in an era
where developed countries are limiting the number of asylum seekers allowed to
enter their territories and making life more difficult for those who do arrive. The
challenges that countries experiencing the arrival of a large number of refugees
face have led to broad multilateral compacts and resolutions (Ferris and Donato
2019), committing governments to work together, to respect the rights of
migrants, and to facilitate their integration into the societies where they are liv-
ing. While the literature acknowledges the importance of integration, less is
known about differences in country-specific policies on integration. This article
is intended to address this gap.
Governments of the eleven countries included in this study—Australia,
Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, and
the United States—have adopted policies that in one way or another have
restricted the entry of asylum seekers while at the same time, at least in some
cases, paying more attention to integration policies. Governments justify their
increasingly restrictionist admission policies on three grounds. First, they make
the security argument: reducing refugee admissions diminishes the threat of
foreign terrorists entering the country and reduces crime. Some Turkish politi-
cians, for example, have expressed concern that the large number of Syrian refu-
gees pose a threat to Turkey (European Parliament 2020), while U.S. President
Trump has repeatedly said Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime to the
United States (Wolf 2018). Second, they use economic reasons to justify restricted
refugee admissions, either to protect the jobs of citizens or to limit the economic
costs of providing social welfare benefits that refugees may require. For example,
the Sweden Democrats, a right-wing political party that is now the third largest
party in the Swedish parliament, “has linked the surge of predominantly Muslim
immigrants to a perception of an uptick in violent crimes and perceived strains
on the Swedish welfare system” (Tomson 2020). Third, they use cultural argu-
ments and posit, for example, that national identity is threatened by the arrival of
refugees who have different values and that the integration of refugees under-
mines national unity and social cohesion. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán has
perhaps been most outspoken on this issue, arguing, for example, that accepting
asylum seekers, including many Muslims, would destroy Hungary’s Christian
identity and culture (Goździak 2019).
All these arguments—used to justify restricting admissions—are related to
integration policy. Refugees who are not integrated into the host society, the
argument goes, are more likely to engage in radical activity, and there is some
evidence from the literature that there is a relationship between integration of
immigrants and security (Debating Europe 2018). Economic integration of refu-
gees enables them to be net contributors to the economy and reduce the costs of
social welfare. And if refugees speak the language and respect the values of the
host country, they are less likely to threaten cultural identity. While policies

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