Gendered Jobs: Integrating Immigrants versus Controlling Immigration in the European Union

We begin the analysis by using descriptive techniques to investigate thegendered patterns of institutional leadership of immigration policy in theEU. We then use logistic regression to predict the sex of ministers. All analyses are performed using R, 64 bit version 2.14.0. Our main independent variables are integration and control responsibility. Ourmain analyses consider all cabinet-level positions with any immigration related responsibilities; we also discuss any differences that stem from analyzing overall and supporting ministers separately (full results available upon request).We then test whether government ideology, immigration rates, or integration policies condition the relationships between immigration responsibility and minister sex. For immigration rates, we calculate the average rates of immigration from outside the EU from 2004–2009(Eurostat 2011). Cabinet and party ideology is scored on a ten-point scale, where 10 corresponds to left-wing ideology (Doering and Manow2011). We measure integration policy with the 2007 Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX)...
Our results also point to a broad association between higher levels ofwomen’s political representation and immigrant-friendly integration policy. For example, women’s share of national legislative seats and thebreadth of integration policy correlate at more than 0.7. The crosssectional nature of our data does not allow us to disentangle the causal relationships at play. On one hand, women in legislatures and ministries may help produce integration policies that are more immigrant-friendly. On the other hand, our findings may reflect a synchronicity of attitudes— that societies more favorable toward female politicians are also more committed to immigrant integration. As longitudinal data on integration policy in the EU becomes available, scholars should investigate these associations empirically...Read more