Frideres and Biles's International Perspectives: Integration and Inclusion provides a birds'-eye view at the complex and often contentious world of immigrant integration policies and practices. The book is divided in two main sections and thirteen chapters offering a range of case studies on integration policies and programs in traditional and more recent immigrant-receiving countries across Europe, North America, the Asian Pacific region and Israel. Its main objective is to shed light on different national governments' experiences in developing and implementing policies to integrate immigrants in the economic, cultural, and socio-political life of the nations in which they reside.
The book's breadth is remarkable, presenting an overview of the historical context of immigration, governmental approaches to integration and inclusion, assessment of policies and programs, best practices and future challenges faced in eleven countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Finland, Israel, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Such an ambitious endeavour was conducted by specialists, both practitioners and academics, from more than twenty academic and governmental institutions from across the world, adding a wealth of diverse perspectives to the analysis of integration policies in the international arena. The impressive variety of case studies and viewpoints is arguably the book's greatest strength.
Throughout the book the authors avoid comparative cross-examinations between national integration models and centre instead in concrete governmental experiences in the development and implementation of immigrant integration policies. This allows, particularly in the first section of the book, for the appreciation of policy convergence between countries with considerably different immigration and integration models. In this way, the book distances itself from traditional analytical distinctions between nation states and settler societies showing diverse experiences and policy trends that cut across those categories such as the increasing utilization of temporary foreign workers in countries as distinct as Austria and Canada or the significant efforts to attract foreign students by the governments of Australia and Japan.
A comparative analysis is offered in the second section of the book, presenting an overview of policies and structures for immigrant integration in Canada and Europe and Canada and Sweden, as well as an analysis of public opinion on immigrant integration in Canada, the United States, France and the United Kingdom. This section is more quantitative, providing balance to the larger qualitative first section of the book.
Moreover, from the very first chapter the book explains the difficulties with drawing conclusions about immigrant integration, since immigrant groups can be incredibly diverse and the term integration itself has conceptual limitations as it changes from country to country. For this reason, the authors look at immigrant integration in a variety of ways. Varun Oberol and Derek McGhee use Bhicku Parekh's definitions of integration to show the historical development of British immigrant integration policies, while John Biles and his colleagues analyze formal and substantive equality in Canada's integration policies and settlement programs. Jock Collins looks at the social integration, social inclusion, and social cohesion of immigrants in Australia and, in a similar manner, Julia Mourao and Sieglinde Rosenberge analyze the social, cultural and structural integration of immigrants in Austria. Also, some case studies are more specific, such as in chapter 6 on labour market integration and social security of immigrants in Finland.
The book does a very good job in revealing how governmental policies and practices institutionalize distinctions between migrants and local citizens, citizens and non-citizens, and documented and undocumented migrants. In this regard, the case of China's hukou, the household registration system that strips Chinese migrant workers from most of their social citizenship rights, as well as Israeli policies that largely exclude non-Jews foreign workers but generously support the integration of Jewish immigrants, are particularly revealing of the double standard of immigrant integration policies.
Another of the book's strengths is that it manages to provide multiple examples of the increasingly subnational character of integration policies, particularly in countries such as Spain, Japan, Austria and the United States, in which cities and states implement policies that help mitigate exclusionary governmental practices. Lamentably, this trend can also work adversely, since local governments can enact exclusionary policies against immigrants such as the case of Arizona in the United States (222).
While the book is impressive in its scope, it is largely focus on migration from the Global South to the Global North, not taking into account the significant migration movements between countries in the Global South. Similarly, it overlooks the relatively small but increasing migration from countries in the Global North experiencing economic recessions to developing countries going through rapid economic expansion, such as the case of current Spanish immigration to Latin America. Lastly, immigrant integration is a multidimensional process and the book could have benefited from taking into consideration how emigration policies enacted by immigrant-sending countries factor in supporting or deterring the overall social, political, and cultural integration of immigrants in their new country of residence. Having said that, the accessible language in which it is written, the variety of perspectives it provides and its impressive breadth makes International Perspectives: Integration and Inclusion a very important contribution for the study of integration policies.
