Migration and integration

Around the mid-1990s, the conditions of life for non-Western immigrants became a recurrent topic in the public debate in Denmark, and the Rockwool Foundation realised that there was a lack of solidly research-based knowledge about the situation of non-Western immigrants.

Consequently, the Board of the Rockwool Foundation asked the Research Unit to formulate a project proposal on this topic, and since the mid-1990s the Unit has undertaken research into the conditions of life of non-Western immigrants, with the main emphasis being laid on their integration into the labour market. This research has subsequently resulted in several further projects and the publication of a large number of books.

Around the turn of the millennium, the Foundation became aware of the need for an extension of the research to include other countries as well, and in 2001 a Danish-German comparative study was launched in which the researchers, using exactly matched data, compared the integration into the labour market and the conditions of life of five large groups of non-Western immigrants in these two countries.

The results of the project, which was carried out in cooperation with researchers from the internationally-recognised Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn (IZA), headed by Professor Klaus F. Zimmermann, were published in October 2004. The research provided insights into how the two different welfare states influence non-Western immigrants’ participation in the labour market. 

After 2003, the field of investigation was widened. One current area of research is the use made by young immigrants of the Danish education system. The first results of this research were published in the autumn of 2008. In 2009, new analyses were published of the patterns of marriage seen among immigrants and second generation immigrants after the changes in the Danish immigration laws of 2000 and 2002.

Research publications in 2011 include analyses of the problems of poverty among immigrants in Denmark, the effects that immigrants have on Danish public finances, and chain immigration to Denmark.