Immigration and immigrant policy in Italy and the UK: is housing policy a barrier to a common approach towards immigration in the EU?

Abstract

The article focuses on the general issue of immigrants' social integration in the EU through a comparative analysis at the national level of two EU countries: Italy and the UK. It distinguishes between immigration policy and immigrant policy, and it highlights major problems related to both the categorisation of immigrants in receiving countries and immigrants' social integration. It focuses specifically on housing policy, which bears heavily on the integration of immigrants into the respective societies of receiving countries. It also considers how close EU member‐states are to reaching a Common Immigration Policy, especially in view of the fact that the ‘Europeanisation’ of immigration policy has concentrated mainly on the problem of entry control rather than immigrant policy.