Multiculturalist Elements in Integration Policies: A quantitative Analysis

Inclusive, legal integration policy is used as dependent variable, therefore this concept was strictly delineated from multiculturalism in chapter 2.2. It is operationalized through the Migrant Integration Policy Index III (MIPEX III) and called mipex_new in this paper. MIPEX III includes 31 European and North-American countries. It uses 148 indicators to show how their respective policies force the integration of immigrants, and to what extent immigrants are entitled to the same rights and duties as non-immigrants. The index was developed by the British Council and the Migration Policy Group, in collaboration with 37 other organizations. The 148 indicators are divided into seven different policy fields (labour market mobility, education, political participation, family reunion for third-country nationals, long term residence, access to nationality, anti-discrimination), which are in turn subdivided into 4 dimensions each. A committee of experts evaluated every indicator with one, two or three points referring to public law, research and policies. A higher score indicates that a country strives for equal status and rights for immigrants. In the end, the MIPEX presents a percentage scale from 0% (critically unfavourable) to 100% (favourable) for each country (Huddleston et al. 2011: 6f.). The data was collected in May 2010 in large part, with some exceptions collected in March 2007. The MIPEX III can be treated as a ratio scale (Ruedin 2011: 18). In order to uphold the necessary and strict demarcation between independent and dependent variable, indicators fulfilling Banting and Kymlicka‘s definition of multiculturalist policies (2006:56) in the MIPEX III need to be sorted out.
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