measuring immigration policies: the impic database marc helbling a,b, * , liv bjerre b , friederike römer b and malisa zobel c

In the last decade, researchers have developed many innovative ideas for the construction of indices measuring immigration policies. Methodological considerations have, however, been largely absent from the discussion. To close this gap, this paper investigates the characteristics of existing indices by critically comparing and discussing them. We start by providing a definition of immigration policy which may serve as a benchmark when assessing the indices. By means of the analytical framework developed by Munck and Verkuilen (2002), which we adapt and customize for our analysis, we then evaluate the conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation, as well as the empirical scope of thirteen immigration policy indices. We discuss methodological strengths and weaknesses of the indices, how these affect the research questions that can be answered and what the next steps in index building within the field of immigration policy should be.

Two sharply contrasting accounts exist for the relationships between welfare generosity and immigrant social rights. The dualization hypothesis argues that due to fiscal pressures and welfare chauvinism, generous welfare states are more likely to exclude immigrants from access to welfare benefits. The generosity hypothesis argues that on the contrary, in generous welfare states, an immigrant will be granted greater access to benefits for material, institutional and cultural reasons. Using newly collected data from the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) project that covers 18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states over 30 years (1980–2010) the two hypotheses are tested using pooled time series analyses. Both a composite index of welfare generosity and social welfare expenditures are used as explanatory variables. Furthermore, the analyses include a number of controls from the welfare state literature, as well as a measure for overall immigration policy restrictiveness. The results broadly support the generosity hypothesis. By contrast, the analyses yield no support for the dualization hypothesis. The index of welfare generosity is positively and significantly associated with immigrant access to benefits, while social welfare expenditures are positively signed but not significant. A number of sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of the results. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that generous welfare states are more likely to grant immigrants access to welfare benefits, and less generous welfare states are more likely to exclude immigrants from access.

How sensitive are country ranks to the aggregation function used in index construction? This paper tests whether different aggregation functions come to different results in regard to the ranking of countries. Indices within the field of immigration and integration policy are analyzed, yet, the results pertain to index building across the social sciences. The paper discusses three aggregation methods: the arithmetic mean, the geometric mean, and a noncompensatory/non‐linear aggregation function based on the Condorcet method. In the empirical part, these three aggregation functions are applied to the family indicators for the year 2010 of the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) dataset, a new dataset which measures immigration policies’ restrictiveness, as well as to the eight policy strands of the Migrant Integration Policy Index for the year 2014. Results show that the methods react differently to extreme values and thus result in different rank orders in the middle range. In the politicized field of immigration and integration policies, country ranks play a crucial role and this is shown to have profound real‐world implications. The paper thus urges researchers to be reflective of the assumptions of different aggregation functions, as these lead to different results.

How do the goals and activities of civil society organisations (CSOs) that are active in the field of immigrant welfare rights differ between autocracies and democracies? In this paper, we argue that a mechanism of CSO engagement plays out differently in these two political contexts because organisations adapt their goals and activities to the political regime they operate in. In the empirical analyses, we compare democratic Argentina and electoral‐authoritarian Malaysia using data from CSOs' public mission statements as well as from interviews with CSO members from both countries. We find that in Argentina, more universalistic constitutional provisions and commitments to international treaties allowed CSOs to reference norms of equal treatment, arguing for immigrant access to a variety of programmes, including non‐contributory social assistance benefits. In Malaysia, CSOs relied on moral frames of equality to a lesser extent. Instead, they advocated for inclusion in contributory schemes on the basis of deservingness of migrants given their contributions to society, focusing on minimum standards to guarantee that basic needs are met.