Conceptualizing and Measuring Citizenship and Integration Policy

Abstract

Research on immigration and citizenship has become one of the fastest growing areas in political science, with one trend being the boon of comparative citizenship and immigration policy indices. This article discusses methodological concerns with this enterprise. The first half addresses issues with policy indices, including (a) concept validity and boundary maintenance and (b) measurement, compensability, and aggregate index use. The second half examines why these problems matter in hypothesis testing and for inference by replicating three policy index-using studies, rerunning analyses with different indices to test consistency of findings. These tests underscore a central finding: What scholars know about the effects of immigration and citizenship policy is subject to data and sample selection. The article concludes with a number of recommendations and strategies for moving forward. These approaches will not only strengthen this growing research agenda but also mainstream migrant-related policy studies into larger literatures in comparative politics.

Perceived Status and National Belonging: The Case of Russian Speakers in Finland and Estonia

“…While perceived discrimination remains to be one of the most severe forms of social exclusion, there is also cumulation of disadvantage which undermines ethnic minority members' possibilities to feel that they are full members of the national community. This is something to keep in mind also when developing index measures of citizenship and integration policy (see Goodman, 2015). Despite the importance of objective macro-level indicators, we should not forget to include also subjective perceptions of social and economic disadvantage in our models on the precursors of immigrant integration.…”

Why Do States Extend Rights to Immigrants? Institutional Settings and Historical Legacies Across 44 Countries Worldwide

“…The selection of additional country-cases should be guided by theoretical considerations (e.g., Goodman, 2015). In view of the variables that our analysis has shown to be relevant, it would be particularly valuable to extend the range of observations to include additional Latin American settler countries (e.g., Uruguay, Chile, Brazil), as well as other former colonies, both democratic and non-democratic ones.…”

Indexing Immigration and Integration Policy: Lessons from Europe

“…For long‐term immigrants, entry is often the first step of a path to member making , i.e., citizenship. By contrast, integration policies are preoccupied with member shaping (Goodman, ), namely successful incorporation into the host society in terms of acquiring skills (language, values) and behavior across any number of dimensions, including social, cultural, civic, economic, and political . In practice, however, these policy areas are oftentimes interrelated and overlapping.…”

“…In terms of the latter, an interdisciplinary community of political scientists, sociologists, and legal scholars have—for over two decades now—examined European countries by developing complex, multi‐dimensional indices capable of differentiating across types of policies, target groups, and instruments, to mention a few (Goodman, ; Jeffers, Honohan, & Bauböck, ; Koopmans, Michalowski, & Waibel, ; Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, & Passy, ; Waldrauch & Hofinger, ). Recently, Europeanists have engaged in extensive debates over conceptualization, specificity, and measurement leading to a set of rigorous standards for differentiating and operationalizing indices (Goodman, ; Helbling, ).…”