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Cantonal variations of integration policy and their impact on immigrant educational inequality

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Migration policy regimes are mainly analysed from an international comparative perspective, whereas subnational policy variations, although they are particularly pronounced in federal states, remain largely neglected. By transferring an international concept of integration policy to Switzerland’s cantonal level, we show that cantonal variations of integration policy are not only considerable but even occasionally exceed international variance. Subsequent outcome analyses further undermine the relevance of cantonal integration polices, suggesting that liberal and culturally pluralist policies moderate immigrant educational inequality in schools. As the results of our Bayesian multilevel analyses show, a combination of different policy aspects representing inclusive cantonal integration policies has the greatest potential to ameliorate immigrants’ equal opportunities in school. Accounting for immigrants’ heterogeneity in terms of linguistic and social background moreover reveals that integration policy differently affects various groups of immigrants.

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  1. However, an increasing interest in the topic can be observed most recently. Besides the forthcoming volume on ‘Immigrant Integration in Federations’, edited by Christian Joppke and Leslie Seidle, another edited volume on ‘Immigration Regulation in Federal States: Challenges and Responses in Comparative Perspective’, edited by Sasha Baglay and Delphine Nakache, is currently in preparation.

  2. In their most recent article, Koopmans et al (2012) present a refined version of their conceptual framework, where single policy components are no longer restricted to one dimension, either the cultural or the individual equality dimension, but may exhibit indicators on both dimensions. As an exploratory factor analysis based on our cantonal data suggests that cultural or religious policy components load on other factors than policy components from the individual equality dimension (cf. Manatschal, 2011), we consider the classical approach offered by Koopmans et al (2005) more suitable for the cantonal context.

  3. Instead, and as Swiss cantons retain almost full jurisdiction over education policy (BFS, 2005; Stadelmann-Steffen, 2012), we control for a couple of general education policies that turned out to be relevant in the case of immigrant educational inequality (see robustness discussion in the empirical part).

  4. The following cantons are included: Argovia, Basle-Country, Basle-Town, Bern (German- and French-speaking part), Fribourg, Geneva, Neuchâtel, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, Thurgovia, Ticino, Vaud, Valais (German- and French-speaking part) and Zurich.

  5. Although the Swiss part of the international PISA data set 2006 indeed contains information on the parents’ and pupils’ country of birth, the extended (that is, cantonal) Swiss PISA data used here do not provide these indicators.

  6. In the PISA sample for Switzerland, only 6 per cent of all schools are private schools. In reality, less than 4 per cent of pupils are enrolled in private schools (Source: BFS, Statistisches Lexikon der Schweiz), which are generally required to enrol a proportional number of pupils from all social strata in order to receive public funding.

  7. We would like to mention that the integration of more controlling variables on the contextual level would be desirable, but is not feasible given the small number of cases at Level 2. In particular, we cannot model more than one variable at a time as cross-level interaction. The modelling of just one cross-level interaction (as in the model presented) results in the estimation of seven parameters (main effect, plus interactions with the six immigrant categories). We therefore did extensive robustness checks testing confounders that could be related to either immigrant inequality or integration policy (see also page 14f). Although these tests (including language region, the share of first-generation immigrants as well as education and school policies) do not question the results presented in the following, we do not insist on the notion of causality. The merits of our contribution should mainly be seen in terms of revealing patterns of correlation between integration policy and immigrant inequality, and further research based on larger data sets is necessary to allow real causal conclusions.

  8. Random slopes have been tested for the immigrant variables at the individual level. As the slope variances proved to be negligible and in order to avoid a too complex model on Level 2, we refrained from integrating random slopes in the models presented here (Snijders and Bosker, 2012, p. 155).

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Correspondence to Anita Manatschal.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A1

Table A1 The basic model

Table A2

Table A2 Variables, operationalization, sources and summary statistics

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Manatschal, A., Stadelmann-Steffen, I. Cantonal variations of integration policy and their impact on immigrant educational inequality. Comp Eur Polit 11, 671–695 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2013.16

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