Socio-economic Integration Research Articles

Combatting violence against African foreign nationals: A criminological approach towards community safety in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa

South Africa has seen waves of collective xenophobic violence and daily criminal attacks targeting foreign migrants. This study interviewed foreign nationals from African countries living in Durban. Through the lens of strain theory, it explores possible solutions to combat violence against foreign nationals in South Africa. The findings suggest the need to address poverty, socioeconomic integration, community participation, and skills. This will reduce strain and build social cohesion. The government should also revise the Immigration Act to accommodate foreign nationals who legally find themselves within its borders. This revision should take into consideration the suffering of foreigners and reduce any restrictive measures that limit their socioeconomic integration.

Анализ методологии регионального стратегирования в странах Центральной Азии

Central Asia is currently undergoing some major transformations on its way to a new active sub-region with a wide system of international relations. The article features various strategies that the countries of Central Asia design for their socio-economic development. It introduces some objective prerequisites that shaped the idea of socio-economic integration of the peoples of Central Asia. Uzbekistan encourages this integration by creating and promoting a new image of Central Asia as a steadily developing and prosperous region with a shared economic and political environment. The author analyzed the approaches that the countries of Central Asia employ to develop and implement their own socio-economic strategies. Following the methodology of strategizing developed by Professor V.L. Kvint, the strategies are harmonized at various levels within the common Central Asian agenda. The current global transformation of the international order makes it difficult to make any reliable forecasts. However, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan present a role model for other regions as they seek to come up with consolidated responses to the new challenges while using their potential and competitive advantages as part of regional and national strategies.

The culture of official statistics. Symbolic domination and “bourgeois” assimilation in quantitative measurements of immigrant integration in Germany

While cultural sociology has recently made a comeback in research on social inequality both in the context of poverty studies and studies of immigrant integration, it has rarely investigated how particular constructions of the problem of socioeconomic mobility are themselves culturally situated. The article addresses this neglect by investigating the problematization of disadvantaged lives within the relational framework of Bourdieu’s cultural theory of the state. Here, the state exercises symbolic violence by transforming one arbitrary cultural standpoint in social space into a universal standard, or a taken-for-granted “doxa,” against which other cultural positions can only come off as deficient. The article extends this perspective by addressing the role of official statistics in this process. Taking Germany’s official monitoring of the socioeconomic integration of immigrants as its case and drawing from document analysis, interviews, ethnographic observation, and data from the German General Social Survey, the article shows how such statistical instruments of the welfare state in fact tacitly universalize a model of the good life particular to civil servants, the very constructors of the monitors, as a benchmark for immigrant integration.

Migration, Marriage, and Cohabitation among Hispanic Immigrant Women in the United States.

Prior research shows links between the timing of migration and family formation, particularly childbearing, among Hispanic immigrants in the United States, with implications for women's socioeconomic well-being. However, temporal connections between migration and union formation, particularly non-marital cohabiting unions, remain underexplored. As cohabiting unions have long coexisted with marriage in parts of Latin America, this omission may be particularly misrepresentative of the family formation strategies of Hispanic immigrants. Drawing on data from the National Survey of Family Growth (2011-2017), I examined the association between the timing of migration and entry into first marital or non-marital (cohabiting) union, treating marriage and cohabitation as competing events for first union type. Among women whose first union was non-marital, I also examined the relationship between migration and the likelihood of transitioning out of the non-marital union, either through marriage or union dissolution. Results showed that marriage formation was high the year of migration, and increased again only after 6 years post-migration, whereas cohabitation was high the year of migration and continued to increase with each period following migration. Furthermore, non-marital unions formed prior to migration were likely to transition to marriage or dissolve, while those formed after migration were likely to remain non-marital. These findings point to distinctions in the types of partnerships formed before and after migration and to the salience of non-marital unions for women who migrate unpartnered, demonstrating the need for further research on the socioeconomic integration and well-being of unmarried or cohabiting immigrant women, and the dynamic connections between migration, gender, and family.

Kentsel Dönüşüm Alanlarının Analitik Hiyerarşi Süreci Yöntemi ile Belirlenmesi

Kentsel dönüşüm, yapısal düzenleme, sürdürülebilir çevresel performans ve sosyo-ekonomik bütünleşme dengesinin gözetildiği bir düzendir. Yapı-çevre-insan ilişkisinin yeniden kurulmasında öngörülen hedeflere ulaşılabilmesi için göstergelerin tanımlanması ve sürdürülebilirliğin sağlanması önemlidir. Çalışmada, kentsel dönüşümde gösterge temelli önceliklendirme yaklaşımı kurgulanarak yer seçim kararlarının alınma süreçlerinde karar destek sürecini besleyen analitik hiyerarşi süreci yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Göstergelerin ölçülebilir, değerlendirmeye açık ve denetlenebilir olması sürdürülebilir yerleşim alanları oluşturulması için bir fırsattır. Kentsel dönüşüm projelerinin olumlu sonuçlarını artırabilmek için yapısal, çevresel ve sosyo-ekonomik bileşenleri kapsayan kriterler tanımlanmıştır. Uzman görüşleriyle kriterler ağırlıklandırılarak kentsel dönüşüm alanlarının belirlenmesinde dikkate alınması gerekebilecek bileşenlerin öncelik sıraları ortaya konmuştur. Önerilen yaklaşım ile kentsel dönüşüm projelerinin öncelikli olarak hangi alandan başlanması ve planlanması gerekliliği tespit edilmiştir.

Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential. By Heba Gowayed

Refugees are often promoted as assets for host states, as investment in their human capital is understood to stimulate economic growth and boost employment in under-resourced industries. Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential inverts this discourse to explore the cost of socioeconomic integration policies for refugees in wealthy Western countries. It proposes ‘state-structured human capital’ as a conceptual frame for understanding how the welfare systems refugees encounter shape their economic mobility and social security, by defining what and whose human capital is recognized and considered worthy of investment. To evidence this proposition, Heba Gowayed documents the experiences of 43 Syrian refugees as they grapple with the social and economic realities of ‘refuge’ in the US, Canada, and Germany. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews conducted in their first years after arrival (2015–18), Refuge paints a picture of men and women striving to enact and advance their human capital on their own terms. Often, this involves struggling against systems that seek to produce them as self-reliant and productive members of society, whilst simultaneously marginalizing them because of their race, religion, gender, and class.

Do ethnic integration policies also improve socio-economic integration? A study of residential segregation in Singapore

Concerns over the negative impact of residential segregation have motivated desegregation policies around the world. Singapore’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) is a desegregation policy perceived to be effective in reducing ethnic segregation. However, there is little clarity about how the Ethnic Integration Policy might affect socio-economic segregation, another important dimension of segregation. This study explores Singapore’s socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation patterns from 1990 until 2020, focussing on three scales of analysis: national, city district-level (subzone) and building-level. Ethnic and socio-economic segregation, which were generally low, fluctuated in opposite directions over the years. While public housing flats were exposed to less ethnic and socio-economic segregation than private housing, findings suggest a negative relationship between ethnic and socio-economic segregation for majority public housing subzones. This inverse relationship between socio-economic and ethnic segregation might be due to the Ethnic Integration Policy's distortionary effect on flat resale prices. These findings highlight the need for greater attentiveness to residential integration policies’ impact on both socio-economic and ethnic integration, and not to assume that policies aimed at improving one would be sufficient to address the other.

Strategic coupling on the European periphery: A case study of a small Hungarian town

The FDI-based economic development policies in East-Central Europe and the strategies of transnational firms seeking cost-efficient production locations close to the main markets of the EU have led during the last decades to the integration of the region into different global/regional production networks, mainly in the form of locations for industrial production. While the intensity of re-industrialization largely determines economic growth and spatial socioeconomic inequalities outside metropolitan regions, the long-term success of this model, which tends to result in a dual economy, dependent development, and the ‘middle-income trap’, has been challenged. According to the GPN literature, which comprises the main theoretical basis of our research, the means of integration is the key to understanding the potential outcomes of this economic model. The process seems to depend on the quality of global-local interactions based on enterprise strategies and multi-level regional assets and agency. Our article focuses on making a comparative analysis of two transnational companies in a small peripheral town and uses the concept of strategic coupling as the analytical framework for the interpretation of the global-local interactions and their developmental outcomes. Based on secondary and primary sources, we examine the key assets and actors in the local environment, follow the development (upgrading trajectories) of subsidiaries, and analyse the dimensions and depth of their local/regional socioeconomic integration. We contribute to the special issue’s main objectives through our case study that reveals strategic coupling dynamics and quality and discusses the chance of more advantageous developmental outcomes in a peripheral location with limited and diminishing local (human) assets.

Debating Equity through Integration: School Officials’ Decision-Making and Community Advocacy During a School Rezoning in Williamsburg, Virginia

We explore puzzling outcomes in a Virginia school district: in 2018, the Williamsburg-James City County School Board voted to redraw attendance boundaries to achieve greater racial and socio-economic integration among its middle schools, yet abandoned similar efforts for high schools. Drawing on Critical Race perspectives, we conducted a content analysis of archival materials, including school board meeting transcripts, to analyze the conditions under which school decision-makers mobilize to enact equity-oriented policy reforms. We found that school board members abandoned high school rezoning in the face of fierce opposition from white, affluent residents who saw school reassignments as a threat to their entitlements to a highly rated school and to their property values. For the middle schools, board members avoided white families’ entitlements, which neutralized opposition, at the same time as strong community advocacy in favor of equity and integration shifted the political landscape. This activated ‘interest convergence’ among school board members supportive of equity and resulted in the approval of middle-school attendance boundaries that produced greater racial and socioeconomic integration. This case underscores the importance of community advocacy for equity-based reforms; however, the scope of these efforts may be limited to changes that do not substantively threaten white parents’ perceived entitlements.

Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness

Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern1–4 and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility4–7. Here we analyse the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building on the analysis in our companion paper7. We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines—measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between people with low and high SES—is explained by differences in exposure to people with high SES in groups such as schools and religious organizations. The other half is explained by friending bias—the tendency for people with low SES to befriend people with high SES at lower rates even conditional on exposure. Friending bias is shaped by the structure of the groups in which people interact. For example, friending bias is higher in larger and more diverse groups and lower in religious organizations than in schools and workplaces. Distinguishing exposure from friending bias is helpful for identifying interventions to increase cross-SES friendships (economic connectedness). Using fluctuations in the share of students with high SES across high school cohorts, we show that increases in high-SES exposure lead low-SES people to form more friendships with high-SES people in schools that exhibit low levels of friending bias. Thus, socioeconomic integration can increase economic connectedness in communities in which friending bias is low. By contrast, when friending bias is high, increasing cross-SES interactions among existing members may be necessary to increase economic connectedness. To support such efforts, we release privacy-protected statistics on economic connectedness, exposure and friending bias for each ZIP (postal) code, high school and college in the United States at https://www.socialcapital.org.

Housing tenure choice and socio-economic integration of migrants in rising cities of China

Migrants' socio-economic integration is taken as one of important forms for common prosperity. And it is a crucial factor for social harmony and stability. However, the association between housing tenure choice and migrants' socio-economic integration does not receive enough attention. Based on 2017 China Migrants Dynamics Survey (CMDS), it is found migrants' socio-economic integration mainly consists of the following three aspects: Economic integration, socio-cultural integration and psychological integration. Compared with migrant renters, the socio-economic integration of migrants with houses is rather higher, while migrants' level of socio-economic integration, who live in employee's dormitories, is comparatively low, even after controlling the endogenous by using PSM and IV method. Further study indicates that the effect of housing tenure choice on migrants' socio-economic integration partly affects their settlement intention, integration will, local capital and labor supply. Heterogeneity analysis shows that new generation have a negative effect on the role of homeownership on migrants' socio-economic integration, while living in eastern China and the development of digital economy can both strengthen the effect of housing tenure choice on migrants' socio-economic integration.

The impact of pandemic COVID-19 on remittances and macroeconomy fundamental in ASEAN 6

Globalization and liberalization increasingly provide opportunities for each country to increase regional and global cooperation. Socio-economic integration is also increasing, along with community cooperation in the regional and global scope. This study aims to determine the effect of remittances and other macroeconomic variables such as FDI, inflation, and export-import on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6 countries. The panel data analysis method used is regression using panel data sourced from the World Bank and ASEAN datasets in the form of annual data. The estimation results from FEM found that exports and remittances showed a significant positive effect on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6. In addition, imports showed a significant negative effect on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6. Meanwhile, several macroeconomic variables that were not significant were FDI, which showed a significant negative effect. Positive but not significant, inflation has a negative but not significant effect on GDP per capita in ASEAN 6. The emphasis on the positive effect of remittances on GDP per capita proves that the flow of remittances into developing countries will help increase income per capita. Vice versa, a crisis that hinders the increase in the enthusiasm of emigrants. The COVID-19 pandemic delays the emigrant's production activities and increases that will hinder the flow of remittances into the country of origin, such as in ASEAN 6 countries.

The role of language proximity in shaping international student mobility flows

ABSTRACT Many papers on international student mobility have analysed different macro factors influencing the decision making of international students. However, only a limited number of studies have considered the role of language distance on international educational choices. This paper aims to fill that gap by identifying the role of language proximity in international degree seeking student flows among 21 countries of the European Economic Area in the years 2005, 2010 and 2015. Our gravity models reveal a statistically significant influence of language proximity on student flows within these 21 countries. We argue that language proximity simplifies academic, cultural and socio-economic integration of international students in the destination country and as a result makes the process of their adaptation to a new environment easier and smoother. Future research should expand on the mechanisms of that influence.

Technology transfer mechanism and its implementation in the innovation process

Problem setting. Since there are several types of mechanism depending on the direction of innovation activity, it is quite fair that today the category of “legal mechanism” and, in particular, “economic and legal mechanism”, “economic and organizational mechanism” is of interest not only. Target of research. The goal of the research is to outline the conceptual mechanism of technology transfer, where one of the most important factors that have the greatest impact on the functionality, that is the crushing force is the potential of development as an object of commercialization and implementation of ready-to-use technology on the professional market. Analysis of recent researches and publications. Eglė Štareikė analyzed the organizational mechanism through an approach to the system of complex control of an open system of socio-economic integration. Boichuk R. P. uses legal mechanisms to ensure the proper implementation of subjective rights and legitimate interests of economic subjects defined by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine. Tereshkina N. E. insists on the existence of normative-legal and regulatory mechanisms in the innovation sphere. Article’s main body. The author points out that the structure of the technology transfer mechanism includes the following elements: the object; the center; the subjects; a set of methods and techniques as tools of analytical, research nature and tools for implementing intentions and plans; the conditions that determine the limitations and requirements for obtaining the target result; the stages An exclusive feature of the organizational and economic mechanism are the subjects and their actions. Entities that create and / or use technologies and / or their components and which own or transfer property rights to use intellectual property rights that are part of technology and individuals who are directly involved in the creation, transfer and use technologies and / or their components, provide the necessary information, financial and other services at all stages of promotion of technologies and / or their components on the market perform certain actions that lead to a certain result at each stage of technology transfer. It was revealed that the stages of technology transfer mechanism consist of stages, which are implemented through processes and end with the compilation of specific documentation. Singling out the individual stages and determining the content of the stages, the processes of each stage is essential for understanding the innovation process. In particular, the following stages: the choice and preliminary assessment of technology; establishment of an assessment of the chosen technology involves the following processes; conducting research to identify a calculation of the assessment of the potential of the development as an object of commercialization and promotion of ready-to-use technology in the core market; cooperation with consumers of technology. Conclusions and prospects for the development. The economic-legal mechanism of technology transfer is considered as a complex inter-branch legal institute that combines the norms of law of different branches (financial, tax, civil, economic law, etc.) and is aimed at systemic legal regulation of social relations in the field of technology transfer on the basis of coordination of legal and economic interests of society. The peculiarity of the structure of this mechanism is that its composition combines both economic regulators and legal factors, the aggregate of which is reduced to the interaction of organizational-economic and legal components. The efficiency of the economic-legal mechanism of technology transfer depends not only on the legal regulation, but also on the coordinated and clear interaction of all its elements and, above all, the actions of the subjects of technology transfer.

Lost in Transition: The Need for a Strategic Approach to Facilitate Job Market Integration of Internationally Educated Physicians through Alternative Careers.

Skilled migration has been an important part of the socioeconomic development and progression of many industrialised Western countries. However, successful migration includes facilitating sociocultural and professional environments, policies, and practices in a way that utilizes the skills of migrants appropriately. Internationally educated physicians (IEPs) are an important part of the health and wellness care program of these countries. Nevertheless, because of regulations and limited available positions, many of these migrated physicians find they cannot enter into the healthcare workforce as practicing physicians. Utilizing their health-related knowledge and skills through nonphysician careers in health and wellness is a beneficial way to integrate these highly skilled professionals into a country’s socioeconomic flow. Despite the availability of alternative careers for IEPs, we identified that these paths are often not explored and facilitated, resulting in un/underemployment and wastage of these highly skilled human resources. A lack of willingness among IEPs, under/overestimation of their transferable skills by themselves and by potential employers, and a lack of strategic support and career guidance are prominent obstacles. A collaborative approach from multiple sectors, including academics, integration service providers, and policy makers, is needed to create awareness of these alternative opportunities and facilitation of the socioeconomic integration of IEPs.

Exposure to Inclusive Language and Well-Being at Work Among Transgender Employees in Australia, 2020.

Objectives. To provide empirical evidence of the positive effects of exposure to inclusive language on trans employees' well-being. Methods. We leveraged unique data from a large Australian national survey of workplace diversity and inclusion (2020 Australian Workplace Equality Index Employee Survey), focusing on a subset of trans respondents (n = 453). We derived self-reported and aggregate-level measures of exposure to trans-inclusive language and created a multidimensional index of employee well-being. We examined their relationships using fully adjusted random-intercept multilevel regression models. Results. We found strong, positive, and statistically significant associations between different indicators of exposure to inclusive language at work and trans employees' well-being. These relationships were large in magnitude and emerged in the presence of an encompassing set of sociodemographic and workplace controls, including other markers of workplace diversity and inclusion (e.g., victimization experiences and identity disclosure). Conclusions. Our results provide robust evidence indicating that efforts to foster inclusive language at work can yield substantial, positive effects on trans people's feelings of belonging and inclusion, thereby contributing to their overall socioeconomic integration. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(3):482-490. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306602).

“To the South, Always to the South”. Factors Shaping Refugee’s Socio-Economic Integration in Spain

This article, based on qualitative research, focuses on socioeconomic integration trajectories of the refugee population in Spain. In the period between 2014 and 2020, refugees’ arrivals in Spain have continuously increased. Despite protection provided by the Spanish Reception System, refugees emulate the same precarious integration outcomes as refugees in other developed countries, such as unemployment, underemployment, poor and unstable housing, low incomes and economic uncertainty, gender inequalities, etc. We believe that a holistic analysis of integration outcomes, overcoming traditional human-capital theories, must include other social and structural factors -economic and institutional frameworks, gender, and ethnic discrimination- that shape their settlement.

The reproduction of social inequalities at neighborhood level in Salvador, Brazil: Does the spatial proximity to affluent gated communities mitigate neighborhood effects?

ABSTRACT The paper examines the impact of neighborhood effects on individuals’ socioeconomic integration in two peripheral shanty-towns and in three favelas located in Brazil. In the peripheral São João do Cabrito, the individuals’ embeddedness in a homogeneously poor region fosters their social isolation; yet, in Fazenda Grande II/Jaguaripe I, the population’s socioeconomic heterogeneity attenuates neighborhood effects. The individuals’ functional integration vis-à-vis their wealthy surroundings declines toward the periphery of their neighborhood, their chances of integration being conditioned by the shared use of public space, and the surrounding gated communities’ degree of spatial isolation. We discuss three mechanisms that explain neighborhood effects: changes in the support structures, the impact of crime, and territorial stigmatization. We conclude that individuals’ chances of integration mainly depend on the spatial distribution of employment and urban services, rather than on their proximity to affluent neighborhoods.

Immigrants resettlement in developing countries: A data-driven decision tool applied to the case of Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia

Immigrants' choice of settlement in a new country can play a fundamental role in their socio-economic integration. This is especially relevant if there are important gaps among these locations in terms of significant factors such as job opportunities, quality of health service, among others. This research presents a methodology to perform a recommended geographic redistribution of immigrants to improve their chances of socio-economic integration. The proposed methodology adapts a data-driven algorithm developed by the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University to allocate immigrants based on a socio-economic integration outcome across available locations. We extend their approach to study the immigration process between two developing countries. Specifically, we focus on the case of the arrival of immigrants from Venezuela to Colombia. We consider the absorptive capacity of locations in Colombia and include the health and education needs of immigrants in our analysis. From the application in the Venezuelan-Colombian context, we find that the proposed redistribution increases the probability that immigrants access formal employment by more than 50%. Furthermore, we identify variables associated with immigrants' formal employment and discuss specific strategies to improve the probability of success of vulnerable immigrants.

Land Use Change in the Cross-Boundary Regions of a Metropolitan Area: A Case Study of Tongzhou-Wuqing-Langfang

Since the 1980s, metropolitan areas have increased worldwide due to urbanization and regionalization. While the spatial integration of the labor and housing markets has benefitted the development of cities within metropolitan areas, they have also brought great challenges for land governance; this is particularly evident in cross-boundary regions due to the complex relations between the markets and the regulations and between governments at different levels. Extensive research has been conducted on the city-level analysis of socioeconomic integration, land use development, and urban governance within metropolitan areas; yet, it is insufficient for understanding the intricate interplay between the various forces in such regions. This study aims to reveal the dynamics of land use change from 1990–2020 and its driving forces in the recent decade in the Tongzhou-Wuqing-Langfang (TWL) region—a typical cross-boundary area between Beijing, Tianjin, and the Hebei Metropolitan Area—using Landsat imagery. We employed the land-use dynamic degree, kernel density analysis, principal component analysis, and multiple linear regression to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of land use change and its driving factors at the district/county level. The results show that the general land use changes from cultivated and forest land to urban and rural construction land across the region. The speed of the trend varies considerably over time between different areas as the land use policies and regulations of each local government change. The population growth and the tertiary and secondary industry growth are the main driving factors for the change in construction land across the whole TWL region, while the urbanization rate and fixed asset investment have different impacts across the cross-boundary region. The results suggest that expanding the integration of land use policies and regulations in the cross-boundary region is urgently required.