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Identifying the Impact of Asylum Polices on Refugee Integration and Political Backlash in Host Communities

Project description

Shedding light on the potential of asylum and integration policies in Europe

During the last decade, European governments have implemented a variety of asylum and integration policies without sufficient evaluation of their impact. The EU-funded INTEGRATE project aims at providing systematic evidence about the causal effects of the key parameters in the asylum process on the short- and long-term integration of refugees and their families in Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Moreover, the project will investigate whether effective integration programmes alleviate hostility and moderate support for extreme-right parties in host communities by leveraging policy-induced temporal and spatial variation in integration success. Through this two-fold approach, the project attempts to contribute to the improvement of social cohesion and the abatement of refugee-native conflicts.

Objective

Confronted with the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, European governments are struggling with a complex and urgent question: how to best facilitate the integration of increasing numbers of refugees, while mitigating political conflict and native backlash in host communities?

Despite the importance of this question, we lack reliable causal evidence of the impact of the asylum process and the consequences of most integration programs. The goal of INTEGRATE is two-fold. First, to provide systematic evidence that identifies the causal effects of the key parameters of the asylum process on the short and long-term economic, educational, health, political and social integration of refugees, their families, and children in five European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Specifically, INTEGRATE will examine the impact of wait times, labor market access, apprenticeship and training programs, early enrolment in language courses, integration contracts, welfare support, and family reunification policies on integration trajectories. INTEGRATE will achieve this goal by utilizing quasi-experimental research designs and by combining the coverage of high-quality register panel data with comprehensive integration measures from targeted surveys.

Second, INTEGRATE will assess whether effective integration programs alleviate hostility and moderate support for extreme-right parties in host communities by leveraging policy-induced temporal and spatial variation in integration success. In so doing, INTEGRATE endeavours to shed light on the potential of asylum and integration policies to improve social cohesion and lesson refugee-native conflict.

In sum, the goal of INTEGRATE is to use causal research designs and innovative statistical methodology to comprehensively evaluate the asylum process in Europe, establishing an evidence base that can be used to redesign the asylum process to improve outcomes for both refugees and host societies.

Host institution

EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
Net EU contribution
€ 1 486 730,00
Address
Raemistrasse 101
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland

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Region
Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Zürich Zürich
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
€ 1 486 730,00

Beneficiaries (1)