Stalled integration? How experience with anti-immigrant expressions and ethnic neighbourhoods affect immigrants´ political integration

Immigrant integration is a key concern in contemporary European societies.

Yet, we have surprisingly little knowledge about to what extent the surrounding society assists or, rather, hinders successful integration.

The general aim of our 3-year multidisciplinary project is to answer how political integration in Sweden is influenced by the migrants’ surrounding environment during the integration window, i.e. the period after arrival, testing the impact of anti-immigrant expressions (including electoral support for the Sweden Democrats) and ethnic neighbourhoods.An original contribution with the project is the extensive data collection.

For the first part of the project, we gather information on anti-immigrant expressions and political integration using surveys to migrants.

For the second and third part, we use the 2016 Swedish settlement reform as a natural experiment to test the causal contextual effect of Sweden Democratic support and ethnic neighbourhoods.

Using register data, we test whether refugees’ integration levels varies depending on the level of Sweden Democratic support and the concentration of co-nationals in the area where they were resettled.The research group includes project leader Frida Boräng, Dept. of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Linna Martén, Dept. of Economics, Uppsala University, and Maria Tyrberg, Dept. of Political Science, University of Gothenburg.