Abstract
This chapter explores the complex theme of immigrants’ civic participation – political or social engagement going beyond voting – in the European Union, using Denmark as a case study. The country has gone through a particularly interesting transformation in terms of immigration policies, from a society initially putting no restrictions on immigration to one requiring a deep link to its culture and a set of “desirable” qualities to allow an immigrant to settle down there, even with a Danish spouse. The related institutional and administrative changes have probably had a great impact on immigrants’ participation in civic and other areas.
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Notes
- 1.
“Immigrants” (or “migrants”) is being used to refer to people of foreign descent in general, born in a foreign country. The word does not necessarily refer to the status of citizenship.
- 2.
“The project seeks to improve our understanding of different factors that promote or inhibit the active civic participation of immigrants… [it] is unique in its construction and has included workshops with foreign-born students recruited as discussants and interviewers and the preparation of country reports on the contextual conditions and the state of research concerning civic participation of immigrants by country experts in all 25 EU countries” (POLITIS 2005: ii).
- 3.
“The survey provides information on individual socio-economic characteristics and various types of participation. It also furnishes information on individual’s country of birth, allowing to distinguish between native- and foreign-born, and the amount of time spent in the destination country for foreign-born… For detailed information about the data see the ESS documentation available at www.europeansocialsurvey.org” (Aleksynska 2011: 568).
- 4.
“Ethnic minorities” or “marginalized ethnic minorities,” as used in public debates, refers to visible minorities among immigrants, explicitly or implicitly characterized by features such as low socioeconomic status; overrepresentation among people on welfare benefits; marginalized, mono-ethnic orientation in social interactions; significantly different cultural and religious backgrounds, priorities and principles; poor participation in the labour market; and residence concentrated in poor, usually suburban, communities.
- 5.
“Descendants” is used here to refer to people born in Denmark but whose parents were born abroad.
- 6.
“Western countries” includes EU countries, all Nordic countries, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Switzerland and the Vatican; “non-Western countries” refers to all other countries.
- 7.
“Danes” refers to people with at least one of the parents being a Danish national born in Denmark.
- 8.
“Foreigners” is used by the authors in reference to all immigrants and descendants from both Western and non-Western countries.
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Rezaei, S., Goli, M., Ribeiro, A., Henriksen, J. (2014). Migration and Integration Regimes and Substantial Citizenships in the EU. In: Walton-Roberts, M., Hennebry, J. (eds) Territoriality and Migration in the E.U. Neighbourhood. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6745-4_9
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