Immigrant integration and the economic competitiveness agenda : a comparison of Dublin and Vienna

Abstract

This article draws insights from the Austrian capital, a city with a long history of immigration, and from the Irish capital, a city of recent immigration, in order to explore urban approaches to immigrant integration, across Europe. It analyses the emergence of current immigrant integration policy types in the two cities, and scrutinises the vision of immigrant integration that informs the policy approaches in place. The findings show that in both cases immigrant integration is essentially used as a tool to foster and to maintain economic growth in the city. Ethno-cultural diversity is seen increasingly as a competitive asset, with which to improve the socio-economic performance of cities. The article emphasises that it is international experts, international cooperation among cities, as well as transnational communication networks,who have promoted this idea, and as a result have stimulated policy convergence across European cities.