SCIP

The project

SCIP is a cross national study about the Causes and Consequences of Socio-Cultural Integration Processes among New Immigrants in Europe.

The study is led by Claudia Diehl at the University of Konstanz, Germany and involves partners from the Goettingen University and Bamberg University in Germany, Radboud University Nijmegen and the Netherlands Institute of Social Research in the Netherlands, the University of Essex as well as the LSE in the UK, and Trinity College Dublin and the Economic and Social Research Institute in Ireland.

The goal of this project is to better understand the reasons for migration of newly arrived immigrants to Europe, the challenges facing them and how the experiences and how they adjust to their new homes in the few years following arrival. It covers immigrants arriving in four European countries, UK, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, and covers both migrants form within Europe and from outside Europe.

In the UK we look at Pakistani and Polish immigrants, while the focus in Germany is on Turkish and Polish immigrants. Ireland concentrates on Polish immigrants and the Netherlands covers a wider range of immigrant groups, both Turkish and Moroccan, Polish and Bulgarian immigrants, as well as some smaller origin-country groups.

The project covers a range of migration topics, including social networks, religious and ethnic identification, language acquisition, attitudes and opinions about the country of settlement and about the immigrant’s home country, and the experiences of new migrants at work and home.

The project was funded  by the NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe) migration programme.

The data

A survey was carried out with around 7000 immigrants across the four target countries. Participants had arrived within just the previous 18 months when they were first interviewed and around half of them were followed up after a year and a half for a further interview.

The data from this two-wave survey will enable researchers to answer unresolved questions about migration processes and the early experiences of migrants in a new country. The data set is unique in its ability to compare outcomes across countries among those who have only just arrived, enabling researchers to understand how early attitudes and experiences change over time and shape – and are shaped by – later experiences. It reveals the extent to which these experiences and processes of adjustment are different or similar across countries and across different origin-country groups. Analysts can thereby shed light on what countries can do to help new immigrants succeed.

The data covering both waves of the study are available from the data archive at GESIS from early 2016.

The questionnaires are available from Goettingen University website.

My role

I am one of the co-investigators on the project and led the UK team and the UK data collection. The UK data collection was carried out by Ipsos MORI for the University of Essex and was described as the Being in Britain study.

The SCIP survey revealed some of the challenges as well as the possibilities for contacting and surveying new immigrants in different European countries and provides insights for future studies. These insights can be found both in the overall methods report, as well as in the research paper I and colleagues wrote about the UK survey.

I am also carrying out collaborative research using the SCIP data on: the nature of Polish migration to Europe, on student migration, on remittances and on political engagement among new migrants.

Other members of the UK team are: Ayse Guveli and Renee Luthra, both from the University of Essex.

The co-investigators from the other countries are: Marcel Lubbers, Merove Gijsberts, Peter Muehlau, Frances McGinnity, Antje Roeder, Matthias Koenig and Cornelia Kristen.

My outputs

More information

Photo credit: Epic Fireworks