Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy (Oxford University Press 2025) is a comprehensive yet compact analysis of responses by governments, communities, and people to human  migration. It is for a readership that wants to view migration issues from a combination of many different perspectives. Though working primarily with policies and trends in the United States, the book interprets them for an intended worldwide audience.

I explore the role of migratory imaginaries as the socio-cultural ground of the formation of migration aspirations and their implications for the various stages of the migration process.

Emerging literature studying temporary and permanent migration decisions expands the existing evidence on gendered migration desires, intentions, aspirations, and plans. Yet there remains a gap in understanding gendered aspirations from the perspective of the origin countries, especially regarding how socially defined factors interact with gender to affect migration aspirations.

We invite you to attend an engaging keynote presentation on the evening before our conference, "Migration, Conflict, and Climate Change."

Keynote speaker for the WZB Annual Address on Migration and Diversity is Halvard Buhaug, Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice.

On November 14, before being presented with one of the the A.SK Bright Mind Awards later that day at the WZB, the sociologist Filiz Garip will give a specialized talk for her peers and anyone interested in the subject matter of sociological methods in researching migration:

Keynote speaker for the WZB Annual Address on Migration and Diversity is Nina Glick Schiller (University of Manchester, UK | Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany).

Many Muslim states have adopted a mixed legal system that combines an essentially Western structure with elements of Sharia in constitutions and legal statutes, implicitly or explicitly. The inclusion of Islamic law and principles in the legal system has at times extended to the West, notably with the establishment of “sharia courts”, or with the judicial use of the cultural argument to accommodate norms as supposedly derived from Islam.

Homosexuality constitutes an entrenched taboo in many Muslim countries and communities. LGBT people of Muslim origin are often treated as out-groups and they face severe discrimination and mistreatment, either as a result of harsh laws or due to the homophobic attitude of their families and communities. What are the causes of this problem? Our guest panelists will discuss whether it stems from Islam or rather from other elements, such as culture, colonial heritage, or an incorrect interpretation of the sacred texts.

Discussants

Are Islam and liberal democracy compatible? Ahmet Kuru's keynote speech will address this complex question from a theoretical, historical and geopolitical perspective, in dialogue with WZB director Ruud Koopmans. After presenting the definition and historical formation of the two concepts, Kuru will examine the political attitudes of Islamists and secularists in various Muslim-majority countries. Focusing in particular on Islamists’ sharia-based state projects, he will show their incompatibility with liberal democracy.

Das europäische Asylsystem ist zum Lotteriespiel geworden: Geografische Lage, Geld, Fitness und Glück auf dem gefährlichen Land- und Seeweg bestimmen, wer es bis zur Grenze schafft, Asyl beantragen und einwandern kann. Wer es nicht schafft, hat das Nachsehen. Europa tut sich mit diesem System aber auch selbst keinen Gefallen.

Moderated by Ruud Koopmans

Joint work with Anne-Marie Jeannet, Esther Ademmer, and Martin Ruhs

Cevat Giray Aksoy and Panu Poutvaara

In großen Teilen der Welt ist Demokratie inzwischen zur Norm geworden. Genau umgekehrt sieht es in der islamischen Welt aus: 53 Prozent der Länder sind autoritär regiert, nur vier Prozent demokratisch. Immer mehr Muslime fliehen vor Diktatur und Unfreiheit, Terror und Krieg, Armut und Arbeitslosigkeit.

The strategic landscape in the Middle East and beyond has significantly changed since the defeat and dismantling of the Islamic State in 2017-2018.

Two developments impact on the threat of jihadi terrorism in Europe and elsewhere: the building of an underground insurgency in Iraqi Sunni territory and the relocation of jihadi fighters, mainly to Afghanistan and Libya.

Article 23 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that ‘Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.’ In international human rights law, and many national constitutions, the right to work, just and decent conditions of work and free choice of employment are effectively merged.

European debates about the reception and accommodation of refugees have since the very beginning of the so called “refugee crisis” in 2015 circled around religious issues: Some (of the most secularized) postsocialist countries rediscovered their Christian cultural heritage as an argument against the immigration of Muslims, and in Germany reports on interreligious conflicts nurtured claims for a separation of refugees along religious lines. The talk draws on an extensive case study on religious diversity and practice in refugee accommodation centers in Lower Saxony.

Abstract

The core of the asylum regime is the principle of non-refoulement that prohibits governments from sending refugees back to their persecutors. Governments attempt to evade this legal obligation to which they have explicitly agreed by manipulating territoriality. A remote control strategy of “extra-territorialization” pushes border control functions hundreds or even thousands of kilometers beyond the state’s territory.

This dissertation weighs in on Olivier Roy’s and Stuart Croft’s diverging positions on Islamist radicalisation. To Roy and those aligned with his arguments, the phenomenon in question is a worrisome matter and should be treated accordingly. Conversely, as per Stuart Croft and those in line with his theories, fear over Islamist radicalisation is socially and culturally constructed to securitise

In public as well as academic discourses, religious fundamentalism has been commonly associated with radicalization, intolerance, and violence. The 6th Annual Conference on Migration and Diversity brings together international researchers to discuss and identify causes and mechanisms related to religious fundamentalism and violence: Under what circumstances do people advocate or even use violence in the name of their religion? To what extent do social deprivation factors such as discrimination, low socio-economic status or lack of integration lead to radicalization?

The health and wellbeing of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (First Nations; Indigenous) has been profoundly shaped by the circumstances of the past, and most particularly by the events and conditions in Australia since colonisation in the late 18th Century. As such, the striking inequalities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians cannot be understood without an appreciation of the history and persistent impact over time of profound dispossession, exclusion, discrimination, marginalisation and inequality, in various forms.

Influential authors portray religion as an overestimated factor in radicalization processes, or even dismiss religion as a real cause. In comparison to anthropological, philosophical and theological theories on religion, these authors define religion too narrowly. Such narrow definitions of religion lead to false contradictions, such as the dichotomy between religion and factors that ‘really’ move people. Measuring ‘religion’ in radicalization processes demands a more comprehensive approach to religion.

People move, and governments react. Do these government decisions make sense? This question prompts even bigger ones, and not just about migration. The reasons for migration are part of a thick web of issues; understanding this broader framework is essential for finding effective responses. Four questions are especially important.

In this article, we investigate destination language skills upon arrival and subsequent skill growth among recently arrived Polish and Turkish immigrants in Germany, Great Britain and Ireland. We introduce selectivity considerations to a model of language acquisition, arguing that positively selected individuals should display higher levels upon arrival and faster growth in destination language proficiency thereafter.

Ten years ago, in April 2007, the WZB established a new research unit on „Migration, Integration, Transnationalization“ led by Ruud Koopmans. The research of the department focuses above all on questions of institutional design and societal consequences of migration and integration using cross-national and interdisciplinary - sociology, political science, social psychology - approaches. In this conference, former and current members of the department will discuss what we have learned in the past ten years and which research questions will define the research agenda for the coming years.

Begrüßung: Jutta Allmendinger, Präsidentin des WZB

Wovon hängt es ab, ob die Integration von Zuwanderern gelingt oder ob Parallelgesellschaften entstehen? Mit dieser Frage setzt sich der Migrationsforscher Ruud Koopmans seit Jahrzehnten auseinander. Ursprünglich überzeugt von der Integrationspolitik seiner Heimat Niederlande, die der Kultur, der Sprache und der Selbstorganisation der Zuwanderer großen Raum gibt und Einbürgerung leicht macht, plädiert Koopmans inzwischen dafür, von Zuwanderern klare Anstrengungen zur Integration in die Mehrheitsgesellschaft zu verlangen.

In einer repräsentativen Befragung wurden Anfang 2016 im Auftrag des Exzellenzclusters „Religion und Politik“ der Universität Münster 1.200 in Deutschland lebende Türkeistämmige zu ihrer Sicht auf Probleme der Integration sowie zu ihren religiösen und politischen Haltungen befragt. 90 Prozent von ihnen fühlen sich, so sagen sie, wohl in der Bundesrepublik. Zugleich sehen sich mehr als die Hälfte als Bürger zweiter Klasse und beklagen, dass sie als Türkeistämmige in Deutschland keine Anerkennung erfahren.

MaD Colloquium
 

Studies of the ‘progressive’s dilemma’ in Canada have tended to paint a rosy picture, concluding that high levels of immigration do not significantly erode social solidarity. However, this happy conclusion is subject to an important qualification: there are dramatic differences in public attitudes towards immigrants and indigenous people, often called Aboriginals. This paper analyses these differences by examining the relationship between perceptions of welfare dependence and support for redistribution, focusing on both groups.

MaD-Colloquium

Cas Mudde and Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler will present their joint book project

How can we change social norms, the standards describing typical or desirable behavior? Because individuals’ perceptions of norms guide their personal behavior, influencing these perceptions is one way to create social change. And yet individuals do not form perceptions of typical or desirable behavior in an unbiased manner. Individuals attend to select sources of normative information, and their resulting perceptions rarely match actual rates of behavior in their environment. Thus, changing social norms requires an understanding of how individuals perceive norms in the first place.

Orlando Patterson will present an excerpt from his latest book The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (co-edited with Ethan Fosse, Harvard University Press, 2015), which addresses a uniquely American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis, segregation, and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other.

This interdisciplinary panel will focus on the community of Israeli immigrants in Berlin, the largest community of Israeli immigrants in Germany. Situating the community within Berlin’s rich multiculturalism, the panel speakers will juxtapose memory studies along with diaspora, immigration and integration theories, seeking to understand how, given the particular part Germany played in Jewish-Israeli history, Israeli immigrants reconcile the past-present duality faced when living in the city.

The conference aims to discuss national identity at different levels, for example how individuals of immigrant and non-immigrant background negotiate and express national identity (e.g., in implicit and explicit attitudes or behaviors), how national identity is reproduced by public institutions such as schools, how states define national identity through their constitutions and laws or what measures and policies governments take to foster certain forms of national identity.

According to ethnolinguistic identity theory, language and accent are important social markers. However, most studies in social psychology have used photographs of faces, names, or other labels of people omitting auditory information. In two lines of research we studied how combinations of accents and looks influence evaluations of such people.

This paper addresses the issue of policy convergence in the area of integration policies from the angle of cultural path dependencies. It raises the question to what extent and how religion has been a factor in shaping integration policies in Western democracies, both with regard to the religious legacies of the host countries and the (predominantly Muslim) religion of immigrant groups. As a starting point, the paper addresses the observation of a growing complexity and

Structural equation models (SEM) are loved and loathed. SEM combine Path Analysis with Confirmatory Factor Analysis. That is, they are directed dependencies between several variables, which may entail latent variables, that are estimated in one model. Particularly researchers who work on attitudes favour SEMs for their easy combination of confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis in one model. Many also fancy that the presentation of SEM estimates highly resembles diagrams of our theoretical models.

Michael Hannan is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and
Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is one of the most-cited American sociologists and a founder of the influential organizational ecology approach in the sociology of organizations. His current work theorizes organizational categories and typecasting processes and empirically investigates the dynamics of categories in the wine and restaurant industries. From 22 September to 3 October he will be at the WZB as a guest researcher.

She is widely known as one of the pioneers of ethnic competition theory and does research on armed conflict, ethnic violence, collective action, and social movement organizations. From 22 September to 3 October she will be at the WZB as a guest researcher.

Barbara Thériault, Université de Montréal, presents her new book entitled

"The Cop and the Sociologist.
Investigating Diversity in German Police Forces"

Introduction: Ines Michalowski, WZB

Commentary: Jérémie Gauthier, CMB

Presentation in German within the Marc Bloch Forum

The debate on trust, cooperation, and civic engagement in ethnically diverse communities has proliferated rapidly over the last decade. Dozens of studies have been conducted on a variety of countries and levels of analysis, across a range of indicators of social capital, and using divergent operationalizations of diversity. The outcomes of these studies have been almost as varied as their research designs. The time has come to draw up the balance. The conference will focus on the discussion about causal mechanisms linking diversity and social capital.  

The workshop brings together researchers from Europe and North America to explore the influence of organizations on the accommodation of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. Whereas international migration research usually focuses on country differences to explain accommodation, this workshop is organized as a cross-organizational comparisons of the military, prisons, the police, hospitals and schools. 

Studies on interethnic network ties have shown for many Western receiving countries that there is still a considerable degree of friendship segregation between racial groups and between immigrants and natives. While existing network studies on immigrant integration mainly investigate friendship ties, the focus of the present study is also on other dimensions of social ties. This paper is one of the first in migration and integration research which analyses the complex intergenerational interdependence of complete networks among children in school-classes with networks among their parents.

The main research question of this presentation is the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school-composition, track-level and country of origin on the educational achievement of 15-year-old immigrant students. The paper (co-authored with Rolf van der Velden & Allison Dunne) specifically focuses on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores and on the extent these effects are affected by characteristics of the school, track or educational system these students are in.

Why have some states been captured by specific ethnic elites and their clienteles, excluding all others from access to government power? Conversely, what explains political inclusion across ethnic divides or, in other words, successful nation building? I argue that high state capacity to deliver public goods and well developed civil society organizations reduce ethno-political exclusion because they produce more encompassing networks of political alliances less aligned along ethnic cleavages.

„Und so stürzt das Kartenhaus der multikulturellen Gesellschaft in sich zusammen”, schrieb der niederländische Soziologe Paul Scheffer im Januar 2000.

Die damals angestoßene Diskussion dauert unverändert intensiv bis heute an. Vor allem die Frage, inwiefern kulturelle Aspekte bei der – gelingenden wie missglückten – Integration in die westliche Gesellschaft eine Rolle spielen, beschäftigt die Öffentlichkeit in den Niederlanden und Deutschland. Ein Vergleich der beiden Länder in Bezug auf die Integrationsprobleme und vor allem die Lösungsansätze ist höchst aufschlussreich.

Globalisation, European integration, and migration are challenging  national identities and changing education across Europe. The nation-state no longer serves as the sole locus of civic participation and identity formation, and no longer has the influence it once had over the implementation of policies. Drawing on rich empirical data from four schools in Germany and Britain, Daniel Faas examines in his new book how schools mediate government policies, creating distinct educational contexts that shape youth identity negotiation and integration processes.

Based on the first large survey on migrant families in France, coming from different countries and belonging to different migration cohorts, this book explores the social trajectories of the so called “second generations”. It focuses on the role and quality of intergenerational relations, and includes all children in a family, i.e. those born in France, those who came to France with their parents, as well as those who have remained in the country of origin or went back there.

In the 1990s, vivid discussions broke out among migration scholars about different national models of citizenship and integration, such as multiculturalism or assimilation. More recently, these classical models of citizenship have been challenged by studies claiming a convergence between countries resulting either from the emergence of a supranational model of citizenship or from a de facto convergence of policies. Do Western European nation states converge towards a liberal, American understanding of citizenship and citizenship rights, as Christian Joppke has repeatedly argued?

Die zunehmende weltweite Migration stellt uns vor neue Herausforderungen. Politik und Gesellschaft müssen sich drängenden Fragen stellen: Was hält die Gesellschaft zusammen? Wie gehen wir mit Dif-ferenz und Konflikt um? Wozu führt es, wenn Unterschiede geleugnet werden? Mit diesen Themen setzt sich Paul Scheffer in seinem Buch „Die Eingewanderten“ auseinander, in dem er die Spannung zwischen einer multikulturellen Realität und den Rufen nach größerer Abschirmung analysiert.