The divisive threat of immigration in Europe

Abstract

This thesis examines immigration’s political effects in Europe over the past several decades. In many countries, immigrants are not integrating well. One result is the growing political strength of nationalist right-wing parties. Tensions have risen between those immigrants who refuse to adopt European values and European natives who consider their identity to be at risk. European governments have essentially two methods by which to control the impact of immigration —they can limit the number of legal immigrants and/or they can insist on integration. This thesis makes the case that integration is key to preventing further political strife over immigration policies in Europe. By examining the performance of immigrant integration policies across twelve European countries, we identify shortfalls and argue on behalf of the need for a standard European Union approach to measure integration performance.