This document discusses the concept of integration of immigrants in Italy and Europe. It describes how integration became a key concept in the 1970s to describe migration processes, replacing earlier terms like assimilation. The concept of integration emphasizes acceptance of cultural diversity compared to assimilation. The document also outlines debates around measuring integration through indicators and developing surveys in Italy, noting challenges due to data quality but recent improvements. It proposes analyzing integration on different levels and improving reliability and longitudinal data.

1. Italy in the European landscape
Corrado Bonifazi | Irpps
Domenico Gabrielli | Istat
Giuseppe Sciortino | Università di Trento
Salvatore Strozza | Università Federico II

2. Defining integration
• What is integration? It is a polysemantic concept, used in
different ways and with different meanings.
• Integration has become the key concept to describe the
consequences of migration processes only in the last
decades.
• Until the early ‘70s the conceptual categories were:
assimilation, absorption, acculturation, inclusion,
incorporation .....
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

3. The emergence of ‹integration› in the
North-american debate
• The notion of assimilation starts to be criticized during the
‘60s, with the “discovery” of the heterogeneity of a society,
characterised by deep cultural differences between groups.
‹Assimilation› is accused to have an implicit reference to the
life-style of the white middle class.
• The new concepts of integration and inclusion are meant to
stress the acceptance of groups with different cultures.
• Assimilation and integration are not always in contrast:
integration implies socio-economic assimilation.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

4. Segmented assimilation
• A good example of the new understanding of the
complexities of integration processes is provided by the
‹segmented assimilation theory› proposed by Portes and
Rumbault.
• This scheme assumes there are many different path that
immigrant groups may travel to adapt to the new society.
They may follow the traditional model and assimilate into the
white middle class. Alternatively, they might follow a less
prosperous path and assimilate into the underclass. Finally,
they might attain upward mobility through the maintenance of
a tight-knit immigrant community.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

5. Integration in the european debate
• European debate on integration is more recent: integration
issues started to appear in the political debate only at the
end of the ‘70s, with the change of immigration from
temporary to permanent.
• It reflects a different migration history.
• Attempts to define different “National models” (France vs
Germany vs UK) (Brubaker, Castles).
• Three main dimension of integration: socio-economic,
political and cultural.
• An emerging concept: civic integration (Joppke)
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

6. The construction of a system of Indicators
of Immigrant Integration in the EU
• Immigration and integration issues have acquired an
increasing importance in the EU during the ‘90s.
• The Hague Programme (2004) stressed the importance of
evaluating integration policies. The Common Basic Principles
on Integration (CBP) adopted by the EU Council in 2004
stated the need to "develop clear goals, indicators and
evaluation mechanisms in order to adjust policy and evaluate
progress on integration”.
• These results were confirmed by the ministerial conferences
of Potsdam and Vichy (2007 and 2008).
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

7. The zaragoza declaration
• The Stockholm Programme (2009) called for the
"development of core indicators for monitoring the results of
integration policies in order to increase the comparability of
national experiences.
• The conclusions of the expert meeting held in Malmö (2009)
presented the results of a process to identify European core
indicators.
• Finally, the Zaragoza Declaration stated “To promote the
launching of a pilot project with a view to the evaluation of
integration policies, including examining the indicators
proposed ..”
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

8. Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

9. Measuring integration in Italy
• In the early 1990s, some scholars began to focus on
integration, providing a general overview of the situation
based on information taken from field surveys.
• It was already clear that integration could be viewed from
several perspectives, that there were different ways of
collecting the necessary data and information, and that there
were specific methodologies and data-analysis techniques
that could be adopted.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

10. The experience of the commission for
immigrant integration policies
• The Commission recommended moving towards what it
called a ‘reasonable’ model of immigrant integration.
• Based on their conceptual definition of integration, the
Commission identified the various aspects that were to be
tackled by the design of an adequate system for measuring
the level of integration of immigrant groups and categories. It
was pointed out that not all the measures proposed could
actually be achieved at the time, both for lack of data or for
the poor quality and reliability of the data available.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

11. Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

12. After the commission
• Some attempts were made by Fieri to implement these
proposals. In particular, it proposed a critical review of the
available data and analysed the integration of foreigners in
the Italian regions and in the four largest metropolitan
provinces.
• Another line of research based on available official data was
developed by CNEL and Caritas, which has published a
Report on ‘Indices of Integration of Immigrants in Italy’ since
2002.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

13. Recent developments
• Since the early 1990s a question on citizenship and/or
country of birth had been inserted into the questionnaire of
the most important national sample surveys, but only in the
last decade data on the subset of foreigners have been
considered reliable.
• LFS since 2005; in 2008 special section on migrant
integration.
• In 2009 EU-SILC on household with almost a foreign
member.
• New survey on ‘Condition and social integration of foreign
citizens’.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

14. Local surveys
• A powerful tool of sampling: the sampling trough aggregation
centers.
• The experience of ISMU in Lombardy.
• The National survey on the consequences of the 2002
regularisation (2005) (30000 foreigners).
• PERLA survey on employment of foreigners (16000).
• Recently, ISMU coordinated a national research project on
‘Measuring the level and differential characteristics of
integration in some areas 2008’ which involved 20 local
research units (12000).
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013

15. To conclude ………. Some proposals
• Several important developments in the implementation of
monitoring systems of migrant integration.
• Analysing integration on different levels, considering its
nature of dynamic and multidimensional process with
important territorial differences.
• The importance of target populations: foreigners, immigrants,
populations with foreign or immigrant background .....
• Improve the reliability of National surveys for these
population sub-groups.
• Introduce longitudinal or retrospective surveys.
• Promote local surveys.
Italy in the European landscape | Corrado Bonifazi | Rome 17 - 18 June 2013