Diversity Proliferation in New Immigrant Destinations

This paper introduces the panel by asking if the new immigrant destinations in Europe differ from the traditional destinations and/or from one another with regard to the general political and social environment within which immigrants are being received. This is an important question because it is not unreasonable to assume that the more receptive a given political and social environment is to new immigrants, the more likely, everything else being equal, that the public policies designed to facilitate immigrant integration will succeed. Against this backdrop it raises and addresses four sub questions. First, do the publics in the traditional, intermediate, and early immigration countries significantly differ in their perceptions of the salience of immigration and the social fallout of immigrant settlement? Second, do the measures hitherto adopted by the traditional, intermediate, and early immigration countries to facilitate immigrant integration significantly differ? Third, are there considerable differences in the way that the experiences of mass immigration and immigrant settlement are perceived by subnational or regional populations within the immigrant destination countries? Finally, to what extent do immigrants in the traditional, intermediate, and early immigration countries see themselves as victims of ethnic, linguistic, national, racial, and/or religious discrimination?