Methodology

It is not easy to develop comparable data between countries. It entails the danger of (over) simplifying complex policies. Policies are adopted in different situations and responding to different circumstances, but must be reduced to the point that they can be compared.

Nevertheless, the policies of different countries are often compared. In academic circles comparative research is very common. Good research not only stimulates academic discussions but also informs policy debates. Profound scientific research or more simple inventories may precede the formulation of concrete policy proposals. A European level example is the practice of the European Commission making inventories or commissioning summaries of Member State policies before proposing directives.

The project is designed such that the results are accessible to a wide group of stakeholders. The research undertaken for this project benefits greatly from existing research and adds in a specific way to the body of knowledge of the EU-15 and now EU-25 (+3) policies on citizenship and labour market inclusion.The methodology was designed such that the output would be useful for a wide group of stakeholders.
We aim to provide accessible, comprehensible and transparent information. The idea is not to provide lengthy country reports describing policies in detail, but to summarise them into a quick reference tool. The information summarised in the Index was all probably available before, given enough searching around for scattered information over many books and research reports. What the Index offers, for the first time, is a simplified, unified format.

The data on Civic Citizenship (Family Reunion, Long Term Residence, Naturalization), Political Participation and Anti-Discrimination is collected by independent experts. Once the list of approximately one hundred indicators has been agreed, and the three options for each indicator formulated, they are sent as a questionnaire to independent experts in each country. Given the distinctive policy fields, one expert is asked to deal with Civic Citizenship and Political Participation and the other with Anti-discrimination. To ensure that choices are consistently made and the results are robust, the 2006 questionnaires are submitted to anonymous peer-review by a second independent expert in each country.

Who are the experts? The experts are well-known scientists and experienced migration and anti-discrimination law practitioners. The names of the experts involved in current (2006) edition of the Index will not be disclosed until July 2007.

The data on Labour Market Inclusion is collected from a variety of sources. Some is collected by the experts referred to above. For the Index 2004 The Raxen Network carried out part of this research. However, much of the data was freely available from various sources (such as country legislation and various reports), and was therefore collated by the research team.

Policies are changing continuously. Policies change continuously, partly as a result of the transposition of European directives and the ratification of international conventions. For both the Index 2004 and 2006 experts were asked to given a 'cut off' date. Policy development s that occured after this date could not be taken into consideration.

Index indicators are about policies and legal provisions. They are not about practices and how the law is (not) applied. Constitutional provisions are not considered a sufficient basis for answers. Only more detailed legislative or administrative provisions are accepted as an option.

Where indicators appear to be problematic they are discussed with the experts. For example, where there were two types of residence status comparable with the long-term residence status as introduced by the Long-term Residence Directive, the choice was made for the one that comes closest to the one of the Directive.When it was difficult to make a choice for an option because none of them reflected reality, the third (and unfavourable) option was taken as a default answer.This occurred in a few instances and it is clearly specified in the comments. In the few cases where the views of the experts and the research team were not the same, the views of the experts prevailed.

It was not always easy to bring the complex realities of policy and law back to the selected indicators and policy options. Indeed, some experts had some uncertainties over certain indicators, where they felt that nuances in the law could not properly be reflected in the options available. Therefore, the experts added comments to their answers so as to explain such nuances. The answers to the questionnaire and the comments are made available in a separate publication16 and the author of this publication is fully responsible for the conclusions drawn from the answers and comments.

Nevertheless, the results are robust and succeed in the aim of offering an indication of countries' policies with respect to immigrant inclusion.The whole exercise is designed to provide indications of how a country's inclusion policies look, and not to provide a comprehensive assessment of Member States' immigration policies and law. Although complex realities were inevitably not entirely done justice, in practice policies and law arguably work out in quite simple and direct ways for the immigrants concerned. A residence status, permission for family reunion, or nationality is acquired after a number of years; there are different levels of protection of the status and there are specific rights attached to a status and others are not, etc.Without wishing to portray the legal and policy landscape in black and white terms, it can be maintained that the outcome of the exercise is a helpful contribution to the debates around civic citizenship and inclusion, precisely because the indicators are robust.