How Migration Policy Shapes the Subjective Well-Being of the Non-Immigrant Population in European Countries

On February 10 Sergey Startsev Alexander Tatarko (Doctor of Sciences, Deputy Director, Center for Socio-Cultural Research, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Psychology, HSE) took part in the "Culture matters" research seminar, organized jointly with the International Laboratory of Social Neurobiology, with the report "How Migration Policy Shapes the Subjective Well-Being of the Non-Immigrant Population in European Countries".

Existing studies show that there is a positive association between pro-migrant integration policies and the subjective well-being of immigrants. However, there is a lack of research elucidating the relations between migrant integration policies and the subjective well-being of the host (i.e., non-migrant) population. This study was based on European data and used multilevel analysis to clarify the relations between migrant integration policy (both as a whole and its 8 separate components such as Labour market mobility and Family reunion) and the subjective well-being of the non-immigrant population in European countries. The authors examined relations between the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) for 22 countries in Europe and subjective well-being, as assessed by the European Social Survey (ESS) data. The results demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between the MIPEX and subjective well-being for non-immigrants. Considering different components of the MIPEX separately, the authors found most of them being positively related to the subjective well-being of non-immigrants. As no negative relationship was identified between any of the eight MIPEX components and subjective well-being, policies in favor of immigrant integration also seem to benefit the non-immigrant population.