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AbstractThis article analyses the social networks of rural–urban migrant entrepreneurs in Uganda. While social contacts are often an important asset to access resources for migrants, they are often expected to financially support the members of their social networks. These claims for support are here labelled 'negative social capital', following Portes' seminal work. This paper focuses on the kinds of networks that are more likely to produce negative social capital, operationalized here as requests for financial resources, and links this to the discourse on bridging and bonding social capital. By means of a regression analysis, this article provides evidence of dense networks with a higher share of migrants (bonding social capital) being associated with negative social capital. In addition, both a higher share of contacts met before migration, which is related to bonding social capital, and a higher share of contacts living in the city, which is related to bridging social capital, are negatively associated with requests for resources. These findings suggest that migrants can instrumentally keep some contacts from before migration and acquire new key contacts in the urban area.

AbstractMigrant entrepreneurship has been recognized as a form of integration in the country of destination and a viable alternative of decent and sustainable employment for migrants. Laws and policies can create barriers or support migrants who start a business in the country of destination. Despite their importance, these laws and policies have received scant attention from academic scholarship. By applying the mixed embedded approach, this article analyses the institutional and policy framework for migrant entrepreneurs in European Union (EU) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and how this framework varies according to the migrants' individual legal status and gender. In order to do so, this article draws upon the findings of two different studies conducted on the topic. The first one analyses the national institutional framework for migrant entrepreneurs of these countries. The second study consists of a review of measures to foster migrant entrepreneurship in the same sample of countries. On the one hand, this article shows that the institutional framework restricts access to self‐employment for some categories of migrants (e.g. based on their legal status). On the other hand, a wide range of measures are now available to support migrant entrepreneurs. However, these measures treat them as a rather homogeneous group. These findings suggest that the fact that some migrants are less engaged in self‐employment or face more difficulties may be explained by the lack of institutional opportunities and policy support.

Refugee integration in small localities poses complex challenges that must be faced through "horizontal" cooperation between local governments, nonpublic and private actors. This article investigates how frequent and how collaborative/conflictual these horizontal governance relations are and whether, and how, they are influenced by political party control of local executives and the local strength of radical right parties (RRPs). Methodologically, we combine quantitative analysis—using a unique dataset of governance interactions across 36 localities, derived from a survey filled in by 185 representatives of nonpublic actors involved in refugee integration governance—and qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with the same interviewees and 68 local policymakers. We show that horizontal governance relations on refugee integration are largely collaborative, but their frequency and quality vary depending on interplays between the type of nonpublic actor involved, local executives' political affiliation and RRPs' strength within the municipal legislative body.

AbstractThis special section focuses on the analysis of migration policy and on how to measure the nature of these policies. It aims to take stock of previous studies and build on this knowledge to propose paths for further development.

AbstractOver the last twenty years, researchers have undertaken systematic comparison of migration policy by creating sets of policy indicators/indexes at the national level. These indicators are designed to analyse the differences and trends in migration policy and then be used by the research community to assess the determinants and effects of policy. This article aims to assess the comprehensiveness of current migration policy indicators by analysing their thematic, geographical and temporal coverage as a way of understanding how migration policy has been conceptualised and measured in quantitative migration research. Our analysis of the 67 existing indexes shows that they disproportionally focus on immigration policy, mainly admission and citizenship, in OECD and particularly Western European countries, with limited opportunities for longitudinal analysis of policy change. These findings reveal that migration policy has been largely conceptualised in indexes as a contemporary phenomenon, concerning mainly Western countries that have become major destination countries.

AbstractThis article provides novel insights into the main factors associated with integration policies at the national level. Existing literature has analysed specific factors in Western countries, while a comprehensive, theoretically informed, and up-to-date overview is missing, especially regarding non-Western countries. This article fills this gap by combining 2014 and 2019 Migrant Integration Policy Index data on integration policies in 56 countries—including non-Western countries—with publicly available international data on migration and asylum trends, economic conditions, and public opinion on migration. Building upon existing literature, we introduce three perspectives: evidence-based, institutionalist, and partisan perspectives. The evidence-based perspective assumes that policy-makers act based on objective factors related to the policy issue (e.g. the number of migrants). The institutionalist perspective points to the relevance of institutional conditions, such as labour markets and welfare institutions. The partisan perspective refers to the role of political ideologies and attitudes in public opinion and in the media. Results suggest that factors related to the institutionalist perspective play the most critical role, alongside factors linked to the partisan perspective. However, the results provide evidence for all three perspectives. Migrant integration policies are associated with several factors: the number of asylum applications and the number of refugees (evidence-based perspective); GDP (per capita) and welfare expenditure (institutionalist perspective); political ideology; and public opinion (partisan perspective).

This article addresses transnational migrant entrepreneurship, which refers to migrants involved in cross-border entrepreneurial activities. Previous models and concepts in migrant entrepreneurship studies have not fully succeeded in recognising the role played by differential groups and places in the pursuit of opportunities by transnational migrant entrepreneurs. This is due to a tendency to focus on the country of residence as well as on the inclination to view migrant entrepreneurs as members of a coherent ethnic or national group. To help fill this gap, we propose a new model combining the concept of multifocality, covering the simultaneous involvement of migrant entrepreneurs in both multiple places and multiple groups, with group modes of behaviour as an additional dimension influencing the opportunity structure. The case of Moroccan transnational entrepreneurs in Amsterdam shows that the role of multifocality in place, in combination with group modes of behaviour, is critical when it comes to pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities.

Due to a lack of data, quantitative analysis of integration policy trends during the past decade has received limited attention. This research note presents newly collected data from the Migrant Integration Policy Index, which includes information on several different policy areas related to migrant integration in 36 EU and OECD countries between 2010 and 2019. Employing a wide set of methods, we investigate whether migrant integration policies have become more liberal or restrictive and whether they have converged across these countries during this period. We find that overall these policies have become more liberal, except in non-EU countries as well as in the areas of family reunion and permanent residence. However, the magnitude of these changes is rather small. We also show that there has been a trend of convergence in integration policy, which varies in intensity across policy areas. We conclude that while migrants' rights have been extended, long-term settlement has been limited. The popular idea that this decade, marked by crises, has triggered a comprehensive restrictive backlash in migrant integration policies is refuted.