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This chapter discusses the political integration of immigrant groups. Entry into the inner precincts of power is a paramount indicator of the overall inclusion of newcomer groups. Indeed, the ability of politicians from immigrant backgrounds to be elected to office is the gold standard for political inclusion, bringing rewards of societal power and a voice in political decisions. The chapter then provides data on the success of immigrant-origin groups in winning positions in local, regional, and national legislatures in the six countries of this book's study; probes the factors that explain the differences in electoral representation; and considers whether, and to what degree, convergences in national laws and policies have reduced the importance of national differences in political integration and may continue to do so in the future.

We introduce our comparative study on minority and majority youth in four European countries by presenting the problem, basic concepts, theoretical starting points and our strategy of analysis. We address differences in integration across (i) immigrant generations (exposure), (ii) immigrant origin groups and (iii) receiving countries, for several indicators of structural, cultural and social integration. We find few and unsystematic differences in integration across receiving countries. Integration is quite remote for some aspects of social and cultural integration and slowest for those originating in poorer regions at greater cultural and socioeconomic distances, such as the Middle East and Africa. Exposure to the host country leads to decreasing differences in language proficiency and host country identification, but not in liberal attitudes and tolerance, religion and religiosity, or inter-ethnic friendships. We conclude that lingering differences should partly be understood against a backdrop of deeply entrenched structural phenomena such as socialisation, stratification and segregation.

In this chapter we use the CILS4EU data to investigate the precise generational status and the origin countries of the adolescent population in England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. We describe the ethnic diversity in the study’s samples in more detail and show that it is very large in each of these countries. In addition, the composition of origin groups varies greatly across the four. This is a challenge for straight-forward comparisons between the countries, which is further complicated by the fact that generational status and origin countries are confounded. The chapter discusses the opportunities and limitations for the empirical analyses in the rest of the book. Basically, we argue for a strategy that regards country and group differences as phenomena of interest rather than of nuisance. They should be seen as descriptive facts and starting points of a search for explaining mechanisms.

This chapter gives a bleak view of the possibilities for panethnicity that suggests that, perhaps inevitably, the interests of one or another national-origin group will take precedence over coalition. It is noted that Latinos have a tendency to prefer organizations that are based on their own groups, which makes it very difficult for Latino coalitions to develop and maintain multi-group organizations. This difficulty is due to the fact that Latino identity and organizational experience is single-group oriented. It also discusses the Sanctuary movement, which was not an “ethnic” movement but primarily a religious one.