TIMEUSE · Immigrant's integration in several EU and non-EU countries: a time-use approach

Immigrant's integration in several EU and non-EU countries: a time-use approach

This project uses a new approach to study how immigrants integrate into their host society by analysing the time they allocate to daily activities. For example, social activities with natives, such as civic engagement, may improve immigrants' socialization and language skills, while economic activities, like work, may facilitate their economic integration. However, current research on immigrant integration has overlooked the time-use dimension, which offers clear advantages. The first advantage is that time-use data provides detailed information on the types of activities performed by both natives and immigrants and the time allocated to each activity. This allows researchers to examine how immigrants spend their time during the integration process. Secondly, the time-use approach helps identify complementary or competing activities that may boost or act as barriers to integration. For instance, analysing the time spent on commuting can reveal whether it hinders immigrants' participation in work activities and how it affects their integration. Additionally, studying the time spent on household activities (e.g. household work, care for younger sibling) versus education activities (e.g. research and homework, taking class) can help identify potential conflicts that may impact integration differently for immigrants and natives. Objective 1: Investigate the differences between immigrants and natives in participation and in the time spent in integrating activities using parametric methods, with a specific focus on gender and time residing at destination. Objective 2: Develop new metrics that analyse the relationships between integrating activities and how individuals distribute the time across activities. The analysis of the relationships between activities allows us to better understand deviations from desirable behaviour and inform policy actions aimed at removing constraints. Conclusions: The concepts and approach used in this project innovates and changes the theoretical perspective of studying integration, from analysing the results of a production process (outcome-based approach) to analysing the consumption and a resources allocation process (in terms of time). This project is interdisciplinary in nature as it combines the economic and sociological disciplines with the statistics discipline. The new metrics are entirely new and innovative and could be applied beyond migration studies, in many other fields of social science that use activities’ relatedness to analyse wider and more complex research questions.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union