Handbook on Integration III

On 15 April 2010, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, presented the third and final edition of its Handbook on Integration for policy-makers and practitioners, written on its behalf by Jan Niessen and Thomas Huddleston of the Migration Policy Group.

The national ministers responsible for integration were meeting in Zaragoza under the current Spanish Presidency of the EU.

The Handbook is available to download in 22 languages below.

Handbook Conclusions

The conclusions of each chapter draw on evaluations of policies and practices that are making integration work across Europe:

• Media organisations that diversify their workforce can provide a more accurate and balanced portrayal of immigration and integration.
• Dialogue platforms require participants representing all parts of civil society, for which governments need to remove any barriers to the civic participation of foreigners and to invest in their organisations and representatives.
• Rates of acquisition of nationality are persistently low across Europe. Residents who see their future in the country will be encouraged to acquire its nationality when key legal obstacles are removed and procedures are facilitated to welcome applicants as citizens-to-be.
• Language and citizenship conditions for naturalisation are successfully implemented when they encourage as many—or even more—immigrants to apply and enable nearly all to succeed.
• Mastering the language of instruction happens better and quicker among immigrant children when these courses are meeting quality-standards, regularly evaluated, and linked to the main school curriculum.
• Teachers with immigrant background and intercultural training improve student attainment, teachers’ expectations and the overall learning environment.

The process

MPG, as independent consultant to the Commission, wrote a series of issues papers and concluding documents for six technical seminars in Vienna (November 2007), Paris (November 2007), Athens (March 2008), Dublin (May 2008), Lisbon (November 2008), and Tallinn (February 2009).

Almost 600 participants, from government and civil society, worked for over 18 months to exchange evidence and practices.

These papers and presentations at the seminars were the basic building blocks for each of the six chapters in the third edition:

• European exchange of information and good practice
• Mass media and integration
• Awareness-raising and migrant empowerment
• Dialogue platforms
• Acquisition of nationality and practice of active citizenship
• Immigrant youth, education, and the labour market

The ‘Companion Guide to the third edition of the Handbook on Integration for policy-makers and practitioners’ is a compilation of the programmes of the seminars and the issues papers that went towards the drafting the Handbook on Integration III

Handbooks I, II and III

MPG has now completed its role as authors of the Handbook series.

The first edition was an important part of the first-ever Ministerial Conference on Integration in Groningen in 2004 when the Common Basic Principles were established.

The second edition was presented at an informal ministerial meeting in Potsdam in 2007. Through Council Conclusions, national governments have endorsed the development and dissemination of the Handbook, including translation into all of the Union’s official languages.

With this third edition, all of the Common Basic Principles have been translated into practices and conclusions.

The third Handbook is available to download in 22 languages below.