Politics, Labour Markets, and the Feasibility of a Multicultural Spain

Integration is a difficult term to define in a few words. The Migrant Integration Policy Index, for instance, links migrants’ integration with a situation in which they ‘have equal opportunities to lead just as dignified, independent and active lives as the rest of the population’ (MIPEX 2011). Surely, enjoying equal opportunities to fulfil Draft Workshop Paper 113your goals in life is an important and necessary condition to achieve integration but often, while we look at the big picture of integration policies at the macro level, we also tend to neglect significant factors that may result in success or failure at the individual level. For instance, do policymakers consider immigrants individually or as members of a cultural group when implementing their integration policies? The answer to this question is not easily captured by the MIPEX indicators, nor relates directly to multiculturalist or assimilationist integration models. Defining a succesful integration process is more related to the particular social, political and economic characteristics of a given society than we may sometimes think...
The MIPEX report looks at the labour market mobility policies. Spain scores high in basic equal access to the labour market and in labour rights, since all residents should -in principle- enjoy equal conditions (Huddleston and Niessen 2011 p.12). However, the Spanish economic recession and the skyrocketing unemployment figures have had a high impact on immigrant workers. We shall see more in detail how the Spanish labour market has contributed to immigrants’ integration or hindered it...Read more