Recent Developing Immigration and Integration Policies

Facing the Oil Crises in the 1970s, some highly-industrialised countries closed their national borders to unskilled workers, which paradoxically induced them to settle there and invited their family immigrants to join them. Since then, around two decades, an increasing number of countries had developed integration policies for immigrant stayers from the perspective of multiculturalism and citizenship. However, as neoliberalism prevailed as a political-economic principle across the world, immigration and immigrant integration policies began to transform into selective ones, favouring highly skilled workers and fending off unskilled workers, family immigrants and asylum seekers. Subsequently, following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and other incidents, immigration and integration policies started to take on security implications, and the state's approach to migration and integration changed dramatically. In response to this change, populist parties and groups have emerged strongly and exerted anti-immigration pressure on the state to take exclusionary policies. Following the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, immigration and integration policies are about to undergo further new development. The aim of this session is to report on the latest developments in immigration and integration policies in various countries in order to consider future directions.