Migrant Integration Policy Index II
Summary
Compilation report of the Tallinn Conference on Conceptualising Integration October 18-19 2007
Including article by MPG Policy Analyst, Thomas Huddleston: ‘Migrant Integration Policy Index – Benchmarking Policies in Europe’
Description
On October 18-19, 2007, the Tallinn Conference on Conceptualising Integration was held that focused on the Estonian integration policy. While being in the middle of composing the new state programme for the years 2008-2013 at the time of the conference, I’m glad that the conference gave us an opportunity to share our ideas with others and at the same time learn form the experience of other countries.
The first conference of this kind took place already in 1999, when the programme for the years 2000-2007 was being developed. Renowned international scholars as Will Kymlicka and David Miller expressed their ideas at that conference. The second conference took place in 2002 and focused on eliciting the Estonian model of multiculturalism and comparing it with models adopted in other countries. World-class scholars like John Berry,
David Laitin and Normand Labrie participated in the conference.
Since then Estonia has come a long way. We have learned a lot and we are grateful for the support and advice we have received from our friends. The purpose of the conference in 2007 was to analyse the draft of the programme for the years 2008-2013, look at what has been achieved in the past seven years and what should be focused on in the coming years.
Eleven well-known scholars and top experts in their field talked about different aspects of integration: the challenges multiculturalism poses to the nation-state, how integration is managed in different parts of the world, how integration can be measured and what role education plays in the process of integration. Estonia
is not the only country facing these questions.
Most contemporary societies are faced with issues related to the ways of accommodating cultural diversity and it is important to share these experiences. This compilation holds the presentations made at the international conference on integration held in Tallinn on October 18-19, 2007.
Some of the authors come from our neighbouring countries, some from places that are further away, some of
them have been to Estonia before and are familiar with our situation, some visited Estonia for the first time in October. This combination of ideas gave us very valuable expertise that helped us in putting together the new programme and will further help us to assess the developments and processes that take place in Estonia.
