The Foundation for Population, Migration and Environment (Zurich, Switzerland)
and
the International Metropolis Project
announce a
Call for Proposals
for a pre-study of
1) The economic integration of skilled migrants; or
2) The integration of religious minorities.
Aim
The Swiss based Foundation for Population, Migration and Environment (PME) (www.bmu-foundation.ch) financially supports research projects and institutions working in the field of international migration. It wishes to stimulate cross-national comparative research for which funding is difficult to obtain.
PME and the International Metropolis Project are collaborating in an effort to stimulate such research by international teams of researchers. This is the third call for proposals under the PME-Metropolis initiative. The first round focused on immigrant integration policies in metropolitan areas and the second round on supra-national governance and the possibilities this affords for managing migratory flows (www.international.metropolis.net). As in the first two rounds, the third round studies should help researchers to develop fundable research proposals that can be submitted to national and international research funding bodies, including foundations.
Themes
The project should cover one of the following research themes that PME and the International Metropolis Project have identified as areas where comparative research is lacking:
(1) The economic integration of skilled migrants
Many countries are reconfiguring their immigration regimes to give priority to highly skilled migrants. In adopting these policies, they are emulating Canadian and Australasian systems with the expectation that educated, experienced workers will quickly adapt to domestic labour markets. Recent evidence from Canada and Australia suggests that this benign assumption may need to be qualified. The last several decades, characterized by extensive economic restructuring, have produced disappointing immigrant performance and slower rates of economic integration. Labour markets would appear to be heavily discounting education and experience acquired in non-Western settings and policymakers have seemingly underestimated the importance of strong language skills.
Disappointing integration trajectories for highly skilled migrants are, of course, problematic for all migrant-receiving countries, regardless of whether newcomers are recruited or enter as family members or refugees. The issue here is not only their entry pathway but the reception they are accorded and the reasons behind it. Metropolis-PME seeks research projects that compare the experience of immigrants with similar characteristics in at least one of the following regional or county pairings:
(i) Canada or the United States with one or more European countries; and
(ii) Australia or New Zealand with one or more European countries.
The study should attempt to discern
- whether immigrants have performed in similar ways in these countries;
- whether the same explanatory factors shed light on performance differences across countries;
- and whether the changes in immigrant economic integration have similar implications for policy and program design taking into account different institutional and policy structures. The policies in question include permanent and temporary admission structures as well as integration programs.
(2) The integration of religious minorities
Although many societies, especially in the most developed countries, have become increasingly secular over the past 300 years, religion remains an important aspect of social and political life and has, in some countries, re-emerged as a beacon of fundamental social and personal values. High volume migration flows, which have increased ethnic diversity, have also led to the growth of religious minorities. In some immigrant societies, this has increased the potential for social conflict, including with respect to the demarcation between public and private values.
We are seeking research projects that will consider the following theme and will do so by comparing countries in at least two of the North American, European, and Asia-Pacific regions: How can we explain the various degrees of conflict between religiously defined groups that one finds in comparing different countries? Possible explanatory variables are:
› Discrimination, policies of intolerance, economic inequalities, and demography (including size and structure of populations);
› Geopolitics which affect minority-majority relations in different ways;
› Social welfare expenditures for immigrant integration, employment and income support;
› National integration ideologies and policies such as multiculturalism, welfare-statism and assimilationism.
For both themes, a cross-national perspective including a trans-Atlantic dimension will be strongly favored.
Fundable activities
Financial means of the Foundation being limited, PME is prepared to support the initial set-up phase of a research program to a maximum of 100,000 euro. Funding for any follow-on research project would have to be obtained from other national or international funding bodies, including foundations. Metropolis has produced a report by Roger Henke (available on the Metropolis website www.international.metropolis.net) where the possibilities for funding cross-national research are explored in detail. The report offers useful guidance in the search of funding.
The funding offered by PME covers meetings by participating research teams, the elaboration of a research design that could be submitted to national or international funding bodies, and pilot research aimed at testing the study design in several locations.
More specifically, PME offers to finance, for a period of approximately two years, the following activities:
- transport and accommodation costs related to meetings of the project team;
- acquisition of data and data manipulation;
- pre-testing of data instruments such as questionnaires or guides for focus groups;
- pilot testing of selected aspects of the main study;
- a solid project proposal suitable for submission to major international and national funding bodies.
Further information as well as guidelines for submitting proposals is available on the Metropolis website at: www.international.metropolis.net.
