Conclusions

Abstract

This book set out to measure whether and to what extent the policy area of immigrant integration was becoming Europeanised, or more specifically to see if member states’ policies were converging around EU norms of immigrant integration and to discern whether any convergence identified was best explained by EU or domestic factors. It responds on the one hand to a specific expectation among some immigrant integration scholars that old models of immigrant integration in Europe are slowly giving way to a model which has emerged at EU level, this being interpreted as ‘a pertinent example of soft best-practice Europeanisation’ (Joppke 2007c:247), and on the other hand, to a broader debate which sees Europeanisation of immigration and integration policies as part of a general pattern of EU competences creeping outwards to include formerly nationally determined policy areas within its remit (Pollack 1994; Szyszczak 2006).