Restricting immigration to foster migrant integration? A comparative study

Samuel D. Schmid

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Are more restrictive immigration policies associated with higher levels of migrant integration? Based on the assumption that more stringent admission regimes will facilitate integration of the immigrants admitted under these regimes, conventional wisdom holds that immigration restrictions indeed foster migrant integration. Yet, empirical analyses testing this hypothesis are rare. This project attempts to provide such a test. We investigate the relationship between both external and internal aspects of admission regimes with various immigrant integration outcomes, i.e., socio-economic, socio-cultural, and political aspects. This project has been done in collaboration with Marc Helbling and Stephan Simon from the WZB Social Science Center Berlin.

Representative publication:

Schmid, S. D. (2020). The architecture of national boundary regimes: mapping immigration and citizenship policies in 23 democracies 1980–2010. Comparative Migration Studies, 8: 25. doi:10.1186/s40878-020-00182-5.

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