IMPACIM: Impact of Admission Criteria on the Integration of Migrants

Family-related migration has become a major channel to gain admission to Europe - and family migrants' integration a concern for European societies. Against this background, the European project IMPACIM deals with the legal rights and restrictions that family migrants meet upon entering the new country and enable or hamper their (post-entry) admission to society. In particular, the project aims to investigate patterns of restrictions and entitlements regarding education, employment, welfare benefits, health, housing, and civic participation. It further explores the political rationales for these patterns as well as their impact on the economic, social, cultural and political integration.

Therefore, the project provides reviews of European law and policy, on the structure of welfare states as well as on relevant academic literature on this topic. Secondly, the project maps the conditions of stay and its rationales for non-EU family migrants. Thirdly, it investigates the impact of these patterns of access and restrictions through analyses of data sets, expert interviews and local case studies.

The project covers four EU Member States: Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study is in the responsibility of research teams in those countries: the european forum for migration studies (efms) at the University of Bamberg, the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Complutense University in Madrid and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) in Oxford.