The Civic Selection of Immigrants: A Nordic Perspective (CiSI)

Workshop grant from NOS-HS.

This series of workshops examine the theory and empirical consequences of civic selection policies that determine whether migrants can enter a country and gain permanent residence and citizenship. Increasingly, Western states aim to design policies that intentionally select ‘desirable’ immigrants for work permits, family reunification, permanent residence and citizenship. Education, employment, income, age, language skills, law-abidingness and knowledge of the host society are typically the kind of requirements implemented or considered to measure (the potential for) civic integration understood as adaptation to some, often nationally particular, cultural, social and economic norms. However, empirical and theoretical research on how such civic selection policies affect society and the selected/de-selected immigrant remain scarce. These workshops examine these questions in a Nordic context because these countries have adopted very different approaches to the use of civic selection policies. In fact, in a European perspective, Denmark and Sweden tend to stand at opposite ends – with Norway and Finland in between.