Keywords

Introduction

International migration and the integration of new residents continue to be not just a key challenge but also an opportunity for nations around the world. Demographically aging nations are dependent on foreign workers to sustain their economies. Richer countries constitute beacons for upward mobility for those from more impoverished backgrounds. On the other hand, these same countries contribute to the “brain drain” that hampers the developing world. Meanwhile, migrant access, reception, and integration at destination are at the heart of policy debates and research alike.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic reignited a focus on migration as countries around the world quickly halted economic activities and restricted the mobility of citizens, guest workers, and asylum-seekers (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021; OECD, 2021). In parallel, conflicts continue to generate flows of migrants seeking refuge within and beyond the borders of their home countries, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 only being the most recent example. Thus, migration and integration issues continue to be at the fore when policymakers meet. Adding to this, the expected number of displaced persons due to natural disasters far exceeds the number of refugees due to conflict. Climate change and other natural calamities could force some 216 million people to migrate by 2050, or so the World Bank’s Groundswell report suggests (WB, 2021).

All in all, at about 281 million in 2020, the absolute number of international migrants as assessed by country of birth versus country of residence is higher than ever. Forced migration has also shot up, in 2020 reaching the highest number ever recorded. As Massey (2023, p. 45, this volume) notes, “The vision of peaceful globalization defined by orderly flows of international migrants seeking opportunities is fading from view.” On the one hand, it is still true that the overwhelming majority of the world’s population never resettles across international borders; on the other, the widely circulated assertions to the effect that the proportion of international migrants has long stayed around 3% can be questioned (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021, p. 23). Not only is it a stock, hence saying little about flows as such, with little up-to-date information on the latter available. Since the world’s population has systematically grown over the past few decades, the absolute number of those who live outside their country of birth has increased. Furthermore, even as the projections on those forced to move for reasons of natural disasters and as a result of climate change are subject to critique (e.g., Durand-Delacre et al., 2021), the phenomenon is likely to increase as climate change-induced disasters are becoming more common. All in all, a sense that things have gotten out of hand has replaced the calm confidence that international migration is both well-ordered and beneficial. Whether true or not, it has served to make international migration quite political.

While the sheer number of people—individuals, families—that are affected is interesting, the circumstances under which they move and are received is an equally pressing issue, no matter the proportion or numbers. Even under the regulated UN asylum quota, refugees face dire conditions during resettlement (Durand & Massey, 2004; Betts & Collier, 2017). Many are subject to the ills of human trafficking and increased border control to hamper undocumented migration and further exacerbate conflicts and deaths (Massey et al., 2016; Betts & Collier, 2017), contributing to heated political debates as well as deteriorating conditions under which refugees are received. Refugees as well as economic migrants arriving in good economic times and in settings facilitating social network connections with natives through, for instance, sponsorship programs, volunteer networks, and extended family networks tend to be more rapidly integrated in the receiving country (Bird & Wennberg, 2016; Gericke et al., 2018; Senthanar et al., 2021). Those factors absent, the prospects are, unfortunately, often harsher. Thus, both the processes of international migration and the conditions facing international migrants upon arrival in a new country affect their potential for successfully integrating in the new country’s society and labor market.

Migration and Integration

Understanding the antecedents, determinants, and consequences of international migration and successful integration in host countries is obviously multifaceted and complex. Integration often refers to a pattern or process by which migrants process become accepted into society, as individuals and as groups. This process can take various forms (e.g., cultural or labor market integration) and may imply distinct hurdles for individuals, groups, and society, as is discussed in several contributions to the present volume. Prevailing multinational (e.g., United Nations), pan-national (e.g., European Union), national, and sub-national migration policies play a significant role in managing migration and its effects on society, but often fail to achieve their declared objectives (Castles, 2004a). Key policy failures include issues highlighting the hegemonic power dimension between the Global North and Global South along with potentially hidden policy agendas, discourses, and implementation gaps (Castles, 2004b; Czaika & de Haas, 2013; see also Jerneck, 2023 and Malm Lindberg, 2023 in this volume), as well as a critical lack of solidarity between nations and an absence of pan-national frameworks and dedicated organizations to match (Scipioni, 2018). Beyond its impact on societies, various public policies on domestic and international migration also influence the agency and migration behavior of individuals (Shrestha, 1987; Castles, 2004b).

The relationship between migration policy and individual migrant behavior continues to play a central role in migration research (Bakewell, 2010). This is only natural as reducing it to a one-dimensional cost-benefit calculation (Sjaastad, 1962; Todaro, 1969) conducted by a prospective migrant will only take us so far (Massey et al., 1993). It has long been held that international migration is a social process set within a particular context that includes macro features, such as institutions and policies, alongside those that provide the immediate setting of the migrant, such as extended family networks (Massey & España, 1987). Thus, drawing on social network and social capital theories (Granovetter, 1973; Putnam, 2000; Lancee, 2012), the significance of relational approaches to migration has long been of interest to migration scholars (Castles & Miller, 2003; Bankston, 2014). As international migration often “take[s] place within an elaborate framework of administrative hurdles” (MacDonald & MacDonald, 1964, p. 83), social networks serve to lower the thresholds for migration. As such it is likely a factor both in chain migration and in onward migration (e.g., Della Puppa et al., 2021). Other phenomena of international migration, such as the existence of migration systems (Mabogunje, 1970; Skeldon, 1997; King & Skeldon, 2010) or cyclical and circular migration patterns, similarly include social and relational aspects in its focus on formal and informal elements. Thus, it comes as no surprise that also the economic sciences, which otherwise emphasizes human capital, is starting to model the economic impact of social networks on migration (Munshi, 2020).

Considerations like these fit well with one of the major developments in migration studies over the past few decades, that of an emphasis on transnationalism. In their path-breaking work, Glick Schiller and colleagues introduce transnationalism to underline that the study of migration must be put in a global perspective. Defined “as the process by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement” (Glick Schiller et al., 1992, p. 1), transnationalism implies that migrants build and sustain multiple links across borders. Digital communication and cheaper transportation obviously help, as do more liberal migration policies, although these policies can be put into reverse, as authorities’ reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated. In the European Union (EU), the legal pillar of “free mobility of goods and people” has meant that citizens have been free to move between member states to study, seek work, or enjoy leisure. Similar legislative provisions have existed for longer in the British Commonwealth and countries with historical ties to the United States of America, albeit at times with legal restrictions tainted by colonialism and racism (Kukathas, 2021). The Covid-19 pandemic challenged the policy of free movement within the EU, with national restrictions on which, and under what circumstances, EU nationals were allowed to move. The development of the EU Digital Covid Certificate only partially solved full and free mobility within the EU borders.

Transnationalism is also related to the integration of migrant families and their offspring, often referred to as “the second generation” (Portes & Zhou, 1993), and can be seen as numerous partly complementary and overlapping, but also partly mutually exclusive, conceptualizations. That set of “distinct conceptual premises” is extensive and includes “transnationalism as social morphology, as a type of consciousness, as mode of cultural reproduction, as avenue of capital, as site of political engagement, and as (re)construction of ‘place’ or locality” (Vertovec, 2009, p. 4). For our purposes, however, the framework allows for developing trust in host country public institutions (Rogstad, 2023; Valdez, 2023, both this volume), for including family strategies and the various forms of mobility and migration available to them (as in Massey, 1990; Stark, 1991), but also what the relative attraction or availability of these are. The latter, including public sentiments and reactions toward migrants, are particularly relevant at a time when things are turned upside down by unexpected events of truly global reach. Commonly defined as “the movement of people across international borders for the purpose of settlement” (Rees, 2009, p. 75), international migration implies permanent or long-term settlement in a new country, in official statistics often approximated with a stay exceeding 12 months. Empirically, migration flows are much more complex than that definition implies. Many migrants move with intentions of long-term settlement but end up staying only briefly. Others move for reasons of temporary work, studies, or refuge, but end up staying permanently. Thus, Skeldon (2021, p. xi) reminds us that the “simple divisions between migrants and non-migrants or those who are mobile as opposed to immobile” must be used with care. As Triandafyllidou (2013, p. 3) notes, various “forms of circular or temporary mobility” are a crucial aspect of migrant transnationalism. In Sweden, the resident country of these editors, the most common annually registered “immigrant category” is in fact that of returning Swedish born. Thus, international migration comprises not just permanent forms but also temporary movements that together make up individual or collective mobility patterns. This leaves us with the issue of transnationalism and integration, understanding how the two interact along various dimensions. As Erdal (2020) argues, both simultaneity and friction, be it antagonistic or productive, is at the heart of how transnational social fields mix and mesh.

All of this tells us that the decision to migrate, the rationale behind such a decision, and the forms it takes, including the choice of destination, cannot be reduced to individual traits alone. While individual characteristics, perceptions, and abilities may influence these decisions, a migrant does not act in isolation. This remains true although as the migration policy of some countries specifically targets some such individual traits, today often in the form of human capital: only those with higher education, certified professional credentials, or particular skills locally in demand will be considered for entry or permanent residency, thus placing the host country’s societal “business case” above humanitarian concerns. Restrictive migration policies of one sort or another are nothing new; rather it has been an on-and-off affair since the nineteenth century. What it signals, however, is that the set of legitimate reasons—as seen from the perspective of the destination country—for relocating from one country to another constantly changes.

In part, restrictive migration policies emanate from supposed problems of integration into the host society, ranging from the displacements of locals from their jobs (or at least forcing down wages) to clashes of social norms, feared to undermine the very identity of the destination country. The rise of anti-immigrant and xenophobic parties across much of the Global North attests to this political tension. Among its many consequences, the introduction of progressively less generous policies and ever more complex legislative provisions for those who seek protection or family reunification can be observed (e.g., Federico & Pannia, 2021; Holtug, 2021), as can the gradual normalization of discriminatory anti-immigrant sentiments (Valdez, 2014; Gorodzeisky & Semyonov, 2016; Kuntz et al., 2017).

On the other hand, successful integration of international migrants into host countries is also multifaceted and complex, involving policies, individual agency, and social networks. One of the dominant ways of assessing integration, that of labor market participation, tends to focus on the category of migration, migration motives, or the domestic labor market situation: labor migrants (almost tautologically) do better than refugees and family members joining established migrants while countries with more flexible labor market arrangements see more extensive (and quicker) integration than do those with more rigid rules (Kogan, 2006). Access to various forms of social capital resources, such as bonding and bridging social capital, is also shown to facilitate job finding and earnings growth among migrants in general (Lancee, 2012) as well as refugees more specifically (Gericke et al., 2018). Other studies report that countries with extensive labor market support policies do better than those with less generous structures and policies in place (Kanas & Steinmetz, 2021). However, empirical research on labor market integration struggles with selection bias with regards to, for instance, immigrant status; at the same time, labor market policy is rarely assessed in requisite detail (Andersson et al., 2019; Platt et al., 2022).

While the labor market integration perspective is important for gauging the processes and rates of self-sufficiency among migrants and how migration affects local and national labor markets, there are many other aspects underpinning the various interpretations of integration (Ager & Strang, 2008). The OECD/EU (2018) evaluation of immigrant integration includes 74 indicators used to assess host country results for the integration of immigrants with respect to the labor market and skills, living conditions, civic engagement, and social life when compared to natives. The socioeconomic variables used, such as employment, over-qualification, relative poverty, overcrowding, health status, and education levels, are relatively easy to measure and lend themselves to cross-national comparison. Yet, these indicators are criticized for being focused on developed nations and, at times, for being poorly defined (Boucher & Gest, 2015).

The concept of integration also has different functions in public policy and research, implying differences between normative aspects of policy making and scientific independence in research (Penninx, 2019). In their much-cited conceptual framework, Ager and Strang (2008) focus on four key indicators also found in the OECD/EU framework (employment, housing, education, and health). Their framework importantly contributes to our understanding by considering the foundation, facilitators, and social connections to underpin the “markers and means” reflecting the most widely measurements as indicative of successful integration. This is in line with other attempts to find workable and realistic typologies, such as those developed by Heckmann (1999) and used by, for instance, King and Mai (2008). These, along with structural (e.g., labor market) and cultural integration (e.g., language skills), also recognize interactive and identification aspects of integration. The latter two, which, among other things, include friendships, intermarriage, membership in host society organizations, and a sense of belonging, are often difficult to capture, but may be expressions of “deeper” integration. Penninx (2019), summarizing these and other efforts, further suggests that it is useful to assess integration at three levels, that of the individual, the organization, and the institutional levels.

Beyond indicators of immigrant integration, and how these might interact with transnationalism, understanding outcomes through the context and dynamics of discrimination is important (see, e.g., Bilgili et al., 2023; Osanami Törngren et al., 2023, both this volume). Immigrant integration can be seen as a two-way process involving immigrants’ receptiveness to the structures, systems, and norms of a host society and the host society’s own engagement toward the immigrants. As mentioned before, societal cost-benefit considerations (e.g., Jerneck, 2023, this volume) continue to influence migration policies and notions of who are welcome based on the likelihood to contribute economically (Ellermann, 2020). Most policy is based on notions of meritocracy and encourages the attainment of human capital for successful integration. Even so, the so-called integration paradox describes the situation of immigrants who are more economically integrated and highly educated turning psychologically away from the host country because of a relative feeling of deprivation (Verkuyten, 2016). As such, integration may also be a factor not only in return migration but also in onward migration (Di Saint Pierre et al., 2015). Homophily (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954), or the tendency of “like to associate with like,” impacts all aspects of social life (Kossinets & Watts, 2009, p. 405) including not just the choice of migration destinations but also the successful integration of immigrants regarding employment, housing, and health. The dynamics of homophily are surprisingly persistent for newcomers (Mollica et al., 2003) and, although it can provide mutual support for in-group members, it can also provide fertile grounds for discrimination.

Enter the Coronavirus

Immediate Effects

The Covid-19 pandemic quickly disrupted not just migration patterns but also the conditions facing migrants worldwide. Its policy consequences unfolded serious repercussions for existing migrant communities while also adding new hurdles for prospective migrants. Generally speaking, no matter the reason for migration, migrants are more vulnerable to unemployment risks and, as it turned out, sectors where migrants typically first find work were hit especially hard by the pandemic (Platt & Warwick, 2020). Although the virus was initially thought of as a great leveler and its early diffusion did indeed correlate with long-distance and recreational travel as much as with poor socioeconomic conditions (e.g., Kuebart & Stabler, 2020), literally within weeks the opposite was discovered to be true. Unfavorable prior health conditions obviously took their toll, yet as the pandemic intensified it became evident that socioeconomic sources of risk (Devakumar et al., 2020) and “adverse non-health effects [were] likewise inequitably distributed” (Lerpold & Sjöberg, 2021, p. 352). Along those of advanced age, migrants were over-represented among those who contracted Covid-19 and suffered the most severe consequences of doing so (e.g., Indseth et al., 2020; Aradhya et al., 2021; Campa et al., 2021; Mude et al., 2021; Jaljaa et al., 2022). Reasons included poor living conditions, difficulties accessing health care (Kumar et al., 2021), lack of information about health precautions (Brekke, 2022; Zlotnick et al., 2022), migrant status (refugees, asylum-seekers, and undocumented migrants being particularly at risk; Burton-Jeangros et al., 2020; Suhardiman et al., 2021). The consequences of these typically “exacerbate[d] entrenched socio-economic advantages,” as Hu (2020, p. 3) notes with respect to the UK, even to the point of increasing the risk of being fired (Ahmed et al., 2023, this volume).

The responses from health authorities, policy makers, and regulators worldwide were varied, often unclear, and politically laden. With both risk and uncertainty running high, there were few, if any, role models or pre-established protocols to follow. Under these circumstances, solutions often took the form of follow-my-leader (Sebhatu et al., 2020), with the leader not necessarily being the World Health Organization but rather close neighbors, geographically speaking. Although this often started a process of stop–go policy making, it also introduced a degree of path dependence that led to a long period of (selective) closure to the outside world, the next to complete lock downs and border closures of entire countries (Australia, China, and New Zealand being noticeable examples). This often started with a focus on those arriving from countries identified as source countries—obviously China but also Italy figured prominently—at times accompanied by stigmatization and racism leading to hate crimes (Reny & Barreto, 2022). As the coronavirus spread, border policy measures became general to the point that, in some instances, citizens were even kept out of their home country.

However, not everything was necessarily a result of impromptu policy decisions, and it is not unlikely that changes were introduced that may prove difficult to reverse. As Gamlen (2020) reminds us, some of it might simply be a continuation of existing trends, such as a slowing of migration growth during the years immediately preceding the pandemic. It may also be that the virus was used as an excuse to minimize the number of immigrants to a nation, a concern voiced in relation to the internment of migrants at the US southern border (Garrett & Sementelli, 2022). Be this as it may, beyond the first wave of the pandemic, some concessions to considerations other than public health could be observed.

Effects as They Stand in August 2022

The realization that migrants often were among the most vulnerable to the onslaught of Covid-19—thus potentially reinforcing existing inequalities—is reason enough to consider the actual and potential consequences of the pandemic. Efforts to come to grips with the impact as it relates to migration and integration can be observed not only in the field of public health but also as it relates to socioeconomic impacts.

As assessed by industries, early victims of the pandemic included the tourism, hospitality, and agricultural sectors (e.g., Hershbein & Holzer, 2021). At the very beginning, tourism and hospitality saw demand drop precipitously (Gössling et al., 2021), while other industries soon found themselves cut off from supply of labor migrants. The latter was primarily the fate of agriculture: in many countries agricultural production critically depends on seasonal workers, many of whom are recruited from abroad. Agriculture, like tourism, hospitality, and leisure, are industries where international migrants oftentimes find their first jobs when moving from developing to developed nations. These are also jobs that imply increased exposure to the coronavirus.

Furthermore, agriculture is politically sensitive for food security reasons and matters the most to poorer households that spend more on food, proportionally speaking. Beyond food, many countries were quick to institute restrictions on exports of critical equipment, such as face masks, protective gear, and respirators. A year or two into the pandemic, other effects appear to have eclipsed such nationalistic moves—but may well have provoked yet others. Shocks induced by the pandemic were also channeled through international supply chain trade, leading to a lack of core intermediate and final goods (e.g., Zajc Kejžar et al., 2022; Zhang, 2022; Ngo & Dang, 2023).

The changes brought by the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects on international migration had immediate policy implications for migration and for the status of migrants in host countries. Although the policy measures, their inclusiveness and generosity, differed substantially across countries, many initiatives sought to lessen the burden on migrants especially vulnerable to the health and economic consequences of the pandemic. “The exceptional character of the Covid-19 emergency,” McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou (2021, p. 5, italics in the original) notes, “has both reinforced the importance of citizenship as a priority marker” and extended the “effective membership further to include everyone present in the territory,” in practice determining access based on “effective presence in the territory of the state.” While this likely does not apply in practice to all migrants, the health-related policy shifts induced by the pandemic did have material consequences for those concerned. While it may have restricted access and made a mess of the manner in which transnational families and households normally organize their lives, in some cases it did provide openings that previously had been denied to those who had to contend with temporary residency and similar issues. Triandafyllidou (2021, p. 5) further suggests that “the pandemic has subverted our dominant understandings of desired, valued, and unwanted migration as those migrant workers previously considered ‘disposable’ like farmworkers, domestic and care workers, courier employees, and platform workers suddenly became ‘frontline’ essential workers.” In Canada, a country known for selective immigration policies, Macklin (2021, p. 27) argues that laws on quarantine had “the effect of reinforcing a stereotype of foreignness as vector of disease and danger to the body politic,” the word “‘essential’ became the stamp on the notional permit that validates movement” both into Canada and across its multiple provinces and territories.

Thus, the pandemic appears to have resulted not only in citizenship and national residence becoming increasingly salient but in some cases the privileges of citizenship were reversed; some countries, after all, refused to let their own citizens return home while temporary residents saw their right to stay extended. All of this makes for a bewildering and interesting mix of policy measures and outcomes—ranging from “detained migrants to essential workers” (Boris, 2021, p. 73)—the only constant across all cases, or so it seems, being that prospective asylum-seekers saw the possibilities of having their cases heard diminish as borders closed with reference to the need of keeping the virus out.

Temporary or Permanent Impact?

Once the pandemic recedes from view, international migration and subsequent integration challenges will continue to be important issues for scholarly attention for the foreseeable future. This is certain as the industries that shed labor in the immediate wake of the pandemic are scrambling to find workers to fill the slots vacated since March 2020. Of course, the pent-up demand and flight from certain occupations might be of a transitory nature if national and international labor markets are able to adjust back toward a pre-pandemic situation. However, international security crises, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequence of energy shortages and inflation may exacerbate labor shortages. To what extent effects of the pandemic on migration and integration processes in isolation or of a short- or long-term nature is an empirical issue. There are structural features that may or may not prove resilient to the widespread consequences of the pandemic. Does it have such demographic effects that it effectively turns experiences, ranging from those captured by the first and second developmental demographic transitions of declining birth and mortality rates and to impacts on migration, upside down—or will it simply revert to the trends observed prior to 2020? Will it change the volume and direction of migration flows in ways that create an entirely new situation or will it merely be a temporary blip on the curve? Will it change migrants’ behavior, for instance with respect to patterns of transnational living and cross-border care? To what extent can changing international mobility patterns bring changes in remittances, both pecuniary and social, and other similar expressions of care for members of extended families? Will diaspora relations at large change? The strict travel laws brought about by the pandemic have affected migration policies in many countries, but will they now revert to those in place prior to 2020? Similarly, will modes of integration—economic, social, cultural—be affected or are we stuck with the same set of hurdles and problems that were recorded across diverse contexts before the advent of Covid-19? Will any successes that might have been achieved be unraveled, prove resistant to replication, or can they be built upon to further advance social cohesion and welfare?

These are important questions for scholars and policymakers alike. Events like the Covid-19 pandemic may not only serve to upset the status quo but also have a lasting impact on international migration theory, policy, and practice. The Covid-19 pandemic is a critical event with the opportunity of reevaluating our extant knowledge through a Rushdie (1992) “broken mirror” lens, and thus provides fertile ground for new research that should give pause to policymakers. How does the pandemic compare to other similarly critical and potentially transformative events of, say, a geopolitical or natural resource nature. It is partly a question of scale. Do events have to be global in scope to make manifest changes that refashion or destabilize existing patterns? Can lessons be learned from events that are more geographically limited, such as Brexit (e.g., Sredanovic, 2021)? Are there structural features of a demographic sort that are geographically confined yet will have repercussion well beyond the areas immediately affected? Must an event be dramatic, unfolding over the course of a few weeks or months, as was the case with the pandemic? Perhaps long-term shifts will be equally seismic, only that we do not observe them or their effects until well into the process. Climate change could be such an eventuality—had it not already been set in motion, that is, its effects being observed across the globe in various forms and initially at very different magnitudes.

Why This Book?

Migration and integration were intensely discussed before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, focus skewed away from migration per se to overall pandemic measures, pandemic relief, public health, and the attempts to avoid a severe economic recession. However, as we have seen, the effects of the pandemic on both migration and integration processes have been profound. This motivates the current volume’s focus on migration and integration. Together with our author contributors, we consider what the immediate and longer-term impacts of the Covid-19 might engender across a wide range of areas. That is, if any such impacts are visible, or visibly invisible, and thus as interesting.

A holistic understanding of migration and integration benefit from many different points of departure in theory and methods. In this book, we approach the broad topic with a predominantly socioeconomic lens. This requires focus on how migration-related issues are shaped by both social and economic concerns, both for individual actors and for collectives (groups and society as a whole), along with a clear purpose of policy or research implications. We approach the Covid-19 pandemic as a critical event in that a causal outcome has occurred (or may occur in the future) because of it (García-Montoya & Mahoney, 2023). The book discusses whether the pandemic will impact the volume and flows of international migration and whether the pandemic has brought immigrants together or driven them apart. Further the book considers how economic and migration policies have been or are likely to be impacted by the pandemic and explores salient organizational actors in the chain of migration and integration such as the trade unions and civil society. Finally, the book turns to aspects of integration as illustrated through labor market sorting and different groups’ employment, along with Covid-19 vaccination prevalence. The main objective is hence to provide a research-based collection of theoretical and empirical chapters combining economic, political, and sociological perspectives on migration and integration. Bringing fresh empirical material to bear on academic and policy discussions on international migration and integration of migrants in host countries, emerging from perceived and actual changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chapter Overview

Following a cue in the highly successful The Age of Migration (de Haas et al., 2019), we recognize the interaction between macro- and microstructures. With this, we mean the interaction between political economy issues, the relationship among states, and the policies and institutional environments of the countries as well as the networks and community ties alongside the transnational nature of migrant experiences and behavior. Ranging from the political, the community, and network oriented, to the individual, the chapters in this book are organized following the logic of moving from macro issues toward microstructures and behavior. Our book starts with a description of international migration through history to better understand how the Covid-19 pandemic might impact on the future. Massey (Chap. 2) presents three eras of mass international migration: the forced migration of Africans to the Americas during the mercantilist era, the mass movement of free Europeans to the Americas and Oceania during the laissez-faire industrial era, and the global movement of people from varied origins to diverse destinations during the neoliberal post-industrial era. Importantly, Massey’s chapter forecasts the likely course of migration in the period ahead through a review of the demographic, economic, climatic, and governmental circumstances prevailing across world regions. He foresees an acceleration of migration between developing and developed regions composed increasingly of people moving to evade threats at places of origin rather than to access opportunities at places of destination. Drawing out the lines, it is likely that the Covid-19 pandemic will have a marginal lasting impact on international migration. As the number of international migrants has grown over time, individuals increasingly and simultaneously identify with, and are supported by, multiple national cultures, thus combining country of origin and country of destination cultures.

Drawing primarily on the experience of the Netherlands, Bilgili, Leung, and Malinen (Chap. 3) explore the dynamics of transnationalism before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic. They discuss and assess changes that materialized from the pandemic isolation across different dimensions of migrant transnationalism to provide an initial understanding of how the pandemic changed and transformed not just economic and social transnational engagements but also experiences of discrimination and stigmatization. The Covid-19 pandemic not only affected everyday lives of migrants but also the social and economic connections with their families and friends in different home and host country contexts. The maintenance and, at times, the intensification of transnational relationships highlight how, in times of crises, migrants rely on each other, especially for their individual and collective resilience.

Migration policies are inherently connected to economic policies and, thus, to the attitudes toward international migration. Jerneck (Chap. 4) juxtaposes what he calls “cosmopolitanism” against “welfare chauvinism” as two alternative policy approaches to migration. Before 2015, Sweden appeared to take a cosmopolitan approach, with a high tolerance for immigration. It rapidly became more restrictive after the 2015 refugee crisis, with proposals to limit the welfare state to citizens who have already “paid in” to the system. Jerneck explores this shift by focusing on the role of an underlying economic policy paradigm based on the idea of scarcity. The official welcoming attitude toward immigrants was undermined by simultaneously framing their presence as a burden on the state budget. The dominant idea that tax money is scarce, and the state should maintain a balanced budget means that higher spending on immigration is expected to come at the expense of the welfare state. This idea shapes the public debate and is institutionalized in a fiscal framework that mandates a government budget surplus. Jerneck finally explores a paradigm that is more amenable to cosmopolitanism in the frame of functional finance.

Though the national economic situation and subsequent policies provide the context for migration policies, Bucken-Knapp and Zelano (Chap. 5) investigate a particular policy trajectory implemented from 2017 until post-Covid. The chapter analyses a specific Swedish initiative known as Gymnasielagen, or the High School Law, allowing for approximately 9000 unaccompanied refugee minors, despite their rejected asylum status, to receive permanent residency if employed within six months of completing their upper secondary education. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic made it difficult for most young refugees to obtain long-term employment within the allotted 6 months. A proposed reform to the High School Law, which would have improved their opportunities for employment, was rejected after highly publicized debates among the political parties. The chapter details how this reform was framed by the political parties throughout 2020 and 2021, using parliamentary transcripts, supplemented by news and social media materials. The analysis combines impressionistic approaches to interpretive policy analysis with the ideational turn in institutionalism and governance research, highlighting how context-specific policy legacies and hegemonic problem definitions determine who was viewed as worthy of policy reforms addressing their needs.

Policies, no matter their antecedents, need to be implemented. How bureaucrats implement contested migration policies, such as enforced return or deportation, strikes at the heart of the most central debates within the migration control literature. An ongoing debate in this literature concerns the “gap hypothesis,” contending a gap between goals of national immigration policy (laws and regulation) and the actual results of policies in that area (policy outcomes). Malm Lindberg (Chap. 6) addresses the question of what characterizes implementation success and failure, in particular what role the organizational context plays. Focus is on three aspects: understanding, ability, and willingness to implement policy decisions. These aspects are analyzed using examples from Sweden based on fieldwork data collected and analyzed within the Return and Reintegration project at the Migration Studies Delegation 2018–2019. The chapter highlights the role of street-level bureaucracy in the implementation of enforcement and return policy and considers the impact of the pandemic on implementation.

Beyond public agencies working to integrate immigrants in the work force, trade unions are particularly important in the European context. Marino, Martínez Lucio, and Connolly (Chap. 7), considering social inclusion in France, Italy, and Spain, and look at how specific class-based union strategies have attempted to directly support groups of migrant workers in an increasingly fragmented labor market. After providing an overview of traditional union actions aimed at promoting migrants’ inclusion, the chapter presents innovative strategies not just at the local and territorial levels but also within the broader organizational structures. The aim is to show that while these forms of inclusion and support constitute an important response to changing conditions in the labor market and wider society, there remain tensions in terms of the sustaining and democratizing of such initiatives across time. The chapter also reveals the political complexities of social inclusion and the way it is enveloped in competing sets of trade unions’ approaches and agendas.

Sweden is an interesting case study of trade unions and the challenges that migration can pose to industrial relations in a highly unionized country with strong labor market stakeholders. Swedish unionization has generally dropped, especially among foreign-born workers. It is known that immigrant workers are more likely to be in long-term unemployment or enduring precarious employment conditions, both becoming especially salient during the Covid-19 pandemic. The gap between native and foreign-born workers, both in terms of labor market conditions and unionization, presents a challenge for Swedish trade unions, especially the blue-collar ones. Growing anti-immigration sentiment, paired with diminished support for center-left parties and increased support for the radical right, has exacerbated these challenges. Bender’s chapter (Chap. 8) provides an insight into whether foreign background explains differences in unionization and shows that workers who are comparable in terms of age, gender, sector, class (blue- or white-collar occupation), place of residence, and form of employment, have roughly the same likelihood of being union members. He argues that labor market sorting matters most and that Swedish trade unions use a default-inclusion strategy that organizes all workers through the same mechanisms and into the same structures. The organizing principle behind this strategy is class, profession and sector, rather than country of origin.

In addition to the public sector and trade unions, civil society and so-called third-sector actors are important for the integration of international migrants in their new host countries. Women with low education levels and weak local language skills are typically considered to be the most marginalized and furthest from the labor market. Nachemson-Ekwall (Chap. 9) focuses on this group of migrants positing that they face cultural and ethnic adversity, poverty, and exclusion. This group of migrants does not respond to standardized labor market integration programs and the author argues that creative new solutions are needed. One such solution may be so-called work-integrating social enterprises, often run as social cooperatives with a focus on democratic involvement. Including a hybrid business model, these civil society actors have both economic and social goals as their purpose in equal measure. Contextualized in the Swedish welfare state system, in particular its liberal market economy, the chapter suggests that there are post-pandemic signs of a more resilient societal contract rebalancing the roles of the public and private sector in favor of new models for immigrant women-labor market integration in the future.

Rather than focusing on a specific group of international migrants and their labor market integration, Kazlou and Wennberg (Chap. 10) set sight on specific sectors and skills requirements. Their chapter examines the sorting of workers from various immigrant groups in Sweden into certain sectors and jobs, and compares these patterns to jobs held by natives in the same sectors. Emphasis is put on the skill composition of jobs and how this affects the sorting of migrants and natives active in the three industries selected for analysis. Using matched data on jobs, employers, and workers in hospitality, construction, and retail industries, they document patterns of country-of-origin-based segmentation. It seems that immigrants primarily enter routine jobs requiring a higher level of technical skills, compared to natives who are more often found in non-routine jobs requiring interpersonal skills. When compared to the hospitality sector, both immigrants and natives in the construction and retail sectors work mostly in non-routine jobs. These stark patterns of job segregation suggest that education and training efforts among migrant workers should specifically consider the acquisition of language and interpersonal skills in addition to formal training and education.

Human capital in terms of education and skills is often cited as being critically important for success in labor market integration. Indeed, a meritocracy assumes that we can objectively assess “the right person for the job.” Yet we know that homophily and unconscious bias play a role. As such, discrimination, in its many facets, has become increasingly important in understanding how immigrants are integrated into the employment. Ahmed, Lundahl, and Wadensjö (Chap. 11) review the economic literature on discrimination, including during the pandemic. Ethnic discrimination, common in labor and housing markets, leads to lower wages and higher unemployment for ethnic minorities, to segregation in the labor market, and to residential segregation. Several studies show that the Covid-19 pandemic increased the extent of such ethnic discrimination. The prejudice against hiring migrants may have increased because people from countries where the epidemic started or from countries with lower vaccination coverage were blamed for the spread. It may also have increased in those cases where the Covid-19 pandemic led to higher unemployment, making it less costly for employers to discriminate.

Following on the theme of discrimination, according to accounts from around the world, minority groups of individuals with an Asian appearance were particularly targeted throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. With a steady growth in the number of immigrants from Asian countries to Sweden since the 1970s, Asians are becoming increasingly visible among the Swedish population. To tackle the historical “narrative scarcity,” Osanami Törngren, Irastorza, and Kazlou (Chap. 12) use register data to describe the educational position and employment situation of the ten largest East, South, and Southeast Asian groups in Sweden, in comparison to non-Asian immigrant groups. They find differences based on the regions of origin: East Asian immigrants were highly educated but had lower employment rates. Once employed, they worked in highly skilled occupations. Southeast Asians had lower education levels and were underrepresented in high-skilled jobs yet had higher employment rates. South Asians levels were in-between these two groups.

Finally, two chapters present data on the prevalence of Covid-19 vaccine inoculation among different immigrant groups residing in Norway and in Sweden. Norway is characterized by an image of small differences overall, where equality appears as a core value, forced by strong personal and institutional trust. However, the Covid-19 pandemic revealed that there was a greater variation between different ethnic groups and native born. Rogstad (Chap. 13) explores what might explain the differences and what it tells us about economic versus cultural integration. Theoretically, his chapter explores a distinction between vertical and horizontal loyalty to public institutions. The chapter is based on both statistical data and interviews with young people aged 25–35 with an immigrant background who live in Oslo. In Norway, a fundamental assumption is that economic and cultural integration is interrelated. When comparing the vaccine rate (cultural integration) and having a job (economic integration), it seems clear that these two dimensions are not equally distributed, with labor migrants originating from Pakistan and Poland having very different kinds of loyalties. The Pakistanis, with generations of immigrants in Norway, had higher unemployment levels, but vaccination levels that were on par with Norwegians. In contrast, the more recently immigrated Poles, with high employment levels, were more skeptical. Poles appeared to be more receptive to the vaccine hesitancy of their social networks in their native Poland, holding a different view of vaccines than the majority population in Norway and the Norwegian authorities.

Beyond institutional trust, employment, and longevity in a country, vaccine hesitancy could also be affected by country-of-origin location segregation in the host country Valdez (Chap. 14) explores immigrant integration and vaccine hesitancy among Somali immigrants in Stockholm. When immigrants are segregated, their integration can be hindered because they are cut off from social networks that contain valuable sources of cultural capital that could otherwise help them adapt to their new home. Therefore, the communities that immigrants live in can have important consequences for their integration. Some neighborhoods, as a function of demographic composition or urban design, encourage inter-ethnic interaction, while others inhibit it. In this chapter, two neighborhoods known to house a group identified as vaccination hesitant are explored—Somali immigrants in northern Stockholm—in order to provide insights into the compositional and built environment factors that may lead to vaccine hesitancy. Neighborhoods that discourage interactions between immigrants and ethnic majority group members may exacerbate existing conditions that lead to vaccine hesitancy—lack of information about vaccines, lack of access to medical care, or lack of institutional trust.

The final chapter Lerpold, Sjöberg, and Wennberg (Chap. 15) concludes with a discussion of the overall findings relative to the purpose of the book and thoughts on further research as well as policy implications.