Civil society organisations and the diaspora-integration nexus

Abstract

In this chapter we present the rationale of the INTERACT survey, which is an instrument designed to map the activities of civil society organisations. The novelty of the survey lies in its cross-national approach; it studies civil society organisations at both destination and origin and treats them as actors that take part in migrant integration in EU destination countries. The survey gathered over 900 responses from diverse types of organisations working predominantly in employment, education, language and the social dimensions of integration. These organisations have different reaches, but their voices give us a better understanding of how they support migrants’ efforts to integrate within in the EU. Although the exploratory character of the survey does not allow one to generalise to the entire population of civil society organisations, it sheds light onto how these actors’ activities impact migrant integration, and how they perceive states of origin and their policies in the context of the day-to-day reality of migrants’ incorporation into the receiving society.