Social interactions between immigrants and host country populations : a country-of-origin perspective

INTERACT - Researching Third Country Nationals’ Integration as a Three-way Process - Immigrants, Countries of Emigration and Countries of Immigration as Actors of IntegrationThe fulltext pdfs are available upon request to migration@EUI.eu during the embargo period (until 6 October 2019)This paper aims at exploring how countries of origin can affect migrants’ socio-cultural integration in multicultural European societies. Socio-cultural integration is considered through the lenses of different kinds of social interactions between migrants and host society namely: intermarriages, interethnic friendship, interethnic relations in workplaces, and encounters in the neighbourhood. The literature review highlighted that these social interactions prove to depend on a multiplicity of factors related mainly to the destination country (such as residential segregation, degree of racism and acceptance, opportunities for encounters and neighbourhood effects) and of individual factors related to the migrant (such as demographic characteristics, migration trajectory and length of residence and work position). The impact of countries of origin and transnational links is more difficult to assess considering that little research has directly dealt with the issue. However, the paper shows that some non-state actors such as family members and some state-actors such as Ministries or consulates, may have an influence on the social interactions of emigrants abroad even though this influence can be indirect. The paper tries to map actors and related actions including very specific cases like family pressure to discourage intermarriage or broader ones through programmes targeting diaspora which may have an empowerment effect on emigrants and thus foster their socio-cultural integration. Finally, through the paper, some specific case studies on transnational ties and integration are presented and several hypotheses and questions for further research are highlighted.INTERACT is co-financed by the European University Institute and the European Union