Immigrant Integration in Law and Policy - The Role of Public Entities and Private Enterprise

Call for papers
The Center for Enterprise Liability (CEVIA), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and the Transoceanic Integration Rules and Private Enterprises Network (TIGRE) welcome proposals for papers/presentations at the International Conference on Immigrant Integration in Law and Policy, which will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark on the 7th of June, 2018.

The conference is open to all scholars from law and related fields, such as political science and sociology, with a research interest in the area. The conference will include papers presented by members of the TIGRE research network as well as papers selected in the course of this call for papers.

Conference theme
The integration of newcomers is a crucial task – but also a daunting challenge –  for societies throughout the world. Even the word ”integration” can be defined in multiple ways, and every national setting has its distinctive features. One way to address this challenge is to examine the legal regulation of immigrants’ access to, and rights within, the labor market, and how governments relate formally and informally to businesses that employ or decline to employ immigrants. Along another dimension, the role in each national setting that might be played by government actors and by private enterprise will vary, both in the labor market and elsewhere in society. These aspects of immigrant integration lend themselves to fruitful comparative study. It is this exploration which is the overarching goal of the conference.

The conference will discuss different approaches to immigrant integration in different national settings. For example, the Danish, U.S., and Japanese responses reflect different degrees of cooperation between public entities and private enterprise. Public entities may be understood differently in different national settings, for example as national, regional, or municipal. Private involvement in immigrant integration can also take many different forms, such as business, chambers of commerce, labor unions, and NGOs. Some examples of public-private partnership may be models to emulate, while others are cautionary tales. These are all questions within the scope of this conference and call for papers.

The interdisciplinary reflections will discuss the following: the notion of immigrant integration and whether some degree of integration can be required as a matter of law, the ways in which integration can be measured and defined, the range of public-private partnerships, and the role of non-state, private actors in advancing integration.

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