Introduction Measures for Newly-Arrived Migrants

8. How can goals and standards be set to provide all migrants in need with equal opportunities across the country?

Why is this an issue?

Introduction measures are intended to help new arrivals meet certain objectives to ease their path in their host country. Indeed, the aim of most integration programmes is to provide new arrivals with equal opportunities to natives and to facilitate their mobility within the country and the job market by giving them a recognised set of skills and competencies. To meet these goals, governments must take steps to delineate clearly what these competencies are and to ensure that all migrants have the opportunity obtain them. Equality of opportunity concerning introduction measures can be thought of in two ways. The first challenge is universal accessibility and coverage. The second is territorial uniformity, i.e. a specified level of service quality should be available across all municipalities.

Policy makers need to set reasonable goals that can be achieved given the country’s policy of integration support – something they are likely to understand fully only through rigorous evaluation (Chapter 10. ). At the same time, they should avoid setting goals that migrants will not be able to achieve for access reasons. This requires an understanding of what introduction measures are actually available to individuals throughout the country. Universal access is essential to fundamental fairness, particularly where integration obligations are imposed rather than voluntary. Geography should not be the reason for a migrant’s success or failure. While many services and innovating organisations may be located in large cities, a country’s labour market realities may push migrants to more remote locations. Countries that perform labour matching should also consider migrants’ integration needs by identifying a way to provide sufficient integration services to migrants wherever they are located.

Ensuring that introduction measures are available everywhere does not guarantee that the quality of such measures will be equal across localities. To afford equality of opportunity to migrants, policy makers must determine a baseline standard that will be acceptable for achievement of integration goals. While countries have increasingly recognised that integration happens at the local level and have thus emphasised the role of local and regional authorities, they also recognise that without some regulation, there is little way to verify or ensure such standards are being followed. This means that in some locations, a migrants’ only integration option could be one that is not producing the integration results the government seeks.

The issue of standard setting is thus related to that of co‑ordination, as effective co‑ordination of stakeholders the most effective way to identify and fill any gaps in services. Goals and standards are not realistic if they cannot be met, and they are meaningless if no one is ensuring that they are effectively implemented. Some central steering can address issues with the quality of courses and facilitate mainstreaming of important innovations in integration. Unlike some big cities, smaller municipalities may need increased government intervention, benefitting from both expertise and budgetary support (Hernes, 2021[49]). Even in cities, surge in demand can place stress on existing high-quality services. Not only are migration flows subject to change, but migration also does not exist in a vacuum. Economic conditions and labour market needs may also change periodically within the host country. Redistribution of resources and responsibilities may be necessary to maintain equality of opportunity for new arrivals.

How to approach it

Set minimum standards for providers and follow through on their implementation

In most countries, standard-setting and quality control is performed by government agencies or non-governmental agents entrusted by the government at the national level (OECD, 2021[10]). In some countries, quality control involves accreditation under a mandatory scheme, which usually includes a more formal periodic inspection (Annex Table 8.A.1). France, for example, has accredited language course providers since 2011 through the ‘French as Language of Integration’ (FLI) label, which entails an audit and an inter-ministerial commission opinion once every three years. The United Kingdom inspects and evaluates ESOL courses and tests through two independent agencies – the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) and the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (OFQUAL). These standards are especially important in a decentralised integration system, such as that in place in Switzerland. While the cantons discretionary power allows them to adapt policies to the local context, it has also led to a great variety of integration practices and outcome differences between the cantons (Kurt and D’Amato, 2021[58]). This has particularly been the case concerning immigrants’ access to language courses, welfare services and decisions on admissions for family reunification, naturalisation and permit extensions (Mexi, Moreno Russi and Guzman, 2021[59]). Several revisions have been introduced to increase the harmonisation of introduction measures between cantons (including setting the same language requirement for a residence permit across all cantons from 2020 onward). Notably, Switzerland uses the Fide certification system, which sets standards of qualifications for language teachers and curriculum for language courses.

Standard setting is essential because measures should be of sufficiently high quality and usefulness to provide adequate return on investment. Comprehensive introduction measures delay new arrivals’ access to the labour market, the logic for which being that participation increases migrants’ outcomes in the longer term. Holding these measures to baseline standards helps ensure that this is true. Another way to ensure efficient allocation of public resources and to support the maintenance of high-quality training across regions and providers is to introduce results-based financing and benchmarking for language providers, as is currently practised in the Netherlands and Denmark (Ramboll, 2017_[50]; Significant, 2010_[53]). These incentives can be useful where an accreditation baseline has not been agreed upon, but they may also be used alongside the approval process. Performance‑based incentives are innovative way to ensure the public purse only pays when the service provider is achieving results (Chapter 9. ).

Having identified measures or standards that the national government deems important does not preclude the country from encouraging measures that exceed these standards. In decentralised systems, offerings may vary substantially. Local actors may be inspired by on-the‑ground experiences to offer additional integration solutions, and they may have particularly effective results. In addition to making their own standards clear, governments should make information sharing easier to facilitate the highlighting and mainstreaming of effective local practices (Box 8.1). In some countries, non-profits have played this role. In the United States, the organisation, New American Economy, collects data and research on good practices and disseminates it to local governments. State governments have highlighted the importance of access to this information in building the business case for growing their integration programmes.

Box 8.1. Communicating with stakeholders regarding programme standards in Norway

Norway has developed a new online resource with information and tools needed to meet legal and regulatory integration requirements, designed for the employees in the municipalities, counties, employment offices and other partners that are responsible for planning and implementing introductory programmes for newly arrived immigrants. Several national agencies have contributed to develop this online resource, principally the Directorate of Integration and Diversity and the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, with contributions from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration and The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs.

The tool includes information on obligatory measures for all participants in the introduction programme, such as competence mapping, career guidance, Norwegian and civic training, the parental guidance course (only for participants with children), and other measures that may be individually tailored to each participant’s programme, such as lower and secondary education, preparatory courses for higher education, work practice, fast track, part-time employment, employment measures, short professional courses, and entrepreneur courses. For non-obligatory measures, the resource offers information and recommendations concerning the measure’s purpose and target group. Tools, resources, and references are provided to help implementers understand how to ensure good planning and quality.

For each measure, there is a description of which relevant public local and regional actors (e.g. the adult education office, employment office, career centres, etc.) and non-public actors (e.g. private employers, non-governmental organisations) should be included in the planning and implementation process. The descriptions also include relevant links to related legislation, other online resources and courses, ‘best practice’ examples, and standardised reporting and information schemes (e.g. to involved employers). Users are invited to provide feedback and share local good practices they have discovered for inclusion in the resource.

An external evaluation of the online resource and the municipalities’ success with use and implementation is ongoing.

Source: https://introduksjonsprogrammet.imdi.no/ (in Norwegian only).

Once a standard or certification has been approved, it is equally important to follow up with providers to ensure implementation. Quality control needs to be carried out by area specialists and may take the form of unexpected checks of a sample of classes or interviews with randomly selected participants about specific aspects of their training. The frequency of such inspections should balance considerations of the need for quality oversight with administrative burden and the anticipated likelihood of material change. OECD and EU countries vary significantly in the frequency of such accreditation reviews, though most fall at 3‑4 years. Korea will increase the period between its reviews from two to three years in 2022. Belgium (Flanders), the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, and the United States conduct such reviews annually. Some countries, such as Canada and Sweden, conduct periodic checks throughout the approved period.

Conduct outreach and provide access to introduction measures everywhere migrants are found

Countries with decentralised systems of government may face barriers to standardisation by design. In a federal system, certain regulatory functions and funding responsibilities are the purview of the individual state or province. However, standardisation of service provision is not only an issue in federal countries. Even where the national government has full control over the integration programme’s plan and design, large cities may be best placed to actually provide services, and thus certain countries have specifically decentralised programmes to municipalities by design. This can lead to inequalities, however. Service providers are located in specific areas, typically where there are concentrations of people, both migrants and service provider staff. Countries must consider how to reach the largest number of people possible, particularly those in remote areas.

The growing importance of local adaptation of integration increases challenges to equal service provision nationwide, but these are not insurmountable, provided the country has tackled the issue of co‑ordination. It is much more difficult for countries with a strong emphasis on localisation of measures to assess whether demand is met, to collect data on outcomes, or to adapt to changing circumstances. For example, a report by the Norwegian Research Institute, Fafo, on adaptation of introduction activities – chief among which is language learning – during the novel coronavirus (COVID‑19) pandemic showed that one in two municipalities faced difficulties in adapting to the new situation (Kavli and Lillevik, 2020[60]) A lack of co‑ordination may also delay the mainstreaming of innovations developed in specific municipalities – often large cities – resulting in unequal opportunities for more remote regions. To mitigate the trade‑off, a more centralised actor will ideally handle the enrolment of learners and their orientation to available course providers. This ‘one stop-shop’ function allows for greater visibility of the programme, more common quality standards for enrolment, and more informed choices by learners in selection of course providers. Greece has developed integration structures to act as one‑stop-shops in areas of high concentration of migrants. Countries that have recently shifted responsibilities to improve delivery of programmes include Australia (Commonwealth Co‑ordinator-General for Migrant Services) and Finland (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment). In Malta, migrants are welcomed into the “I Belong” integration programme by the Intercultural and Anti-Racism Unit (a unit of the Human Rights Directorate within the Ministry of Equality, Innovation and Research), which also oversees the integration courses in co‑operation with two local universities.

In most countries, migrants living in large urban areas have a choice of integration service providers, and they are typically able to access services shortly after arrival. In rural areas and smaller municipalities, access is more challenging. Scaled support for rural areas and small towns can help. Financial compensation by the national government can supplement local budgets and incentivise municipal governments to increase integration offerings. Consistency of budgetary support provides stability that supports sustainable integration service provision as opposed to ad hoc measures. Conditioning the receipt of such funding on meeting certain standards is likely to increase the quality of the offerings.

The national government can also support municipalities in engaging in information exchange. A national network, whether virtual or in person, can disseminate best practices, share training materials, and give local actors a voice. This facilitates replication of successful local introduction measures rather than pressuring every municipality to design its own programme. The Swedish Rural Development Programme supports a variety of municipalities in training and employing migrants with an emphasis on reducing barriers. Support is offered in the areas of language training, including vocational language, transportation support, and raising awareness with employers.

Digitalisation is another innovative way to reach new arrivals where in-person services may be difficult for reasons of scale. Finland has reported success with distance language learning, which brings together a small number of migrants living in remote areas. Where the demand is relatively small and the migrants are geographically dispersed, such as is the case for migrants in south-west Finland seeking to integrate in Swedish, such digital classrooms have important impact. Where this is done, service providers may need to plan for some initial digital upskilling to prepare migrant to use these tools, perhaps by bringing the migrants together for an in-person orientation session.

Use data to anticipate needs and avoid oversubscription

Ensuring that all migrants in need receive integration services early also implies that demand is forecasted efficiently to make sure that spots are readily available and waiting lists are limited. Currently, a number of countries struggle to provide sufficient places in integration courses, which leads to longer waits. Excessive waitlists can functionally create a dearth of services. Adding more teachers is a solution, but one that must be approached with the understanding that student numbers can also decline in response to migration shifts. Countries need to be able to meet the needs of migrants wherever in their territory they are located, but they also need to avoid waste created by providing an excess of services when (and where) migrant flows are low. This is a dilemma that requires countries to think about how they could build anticipatory capacity by conducting, at all levels of government, forward-looking analyses about the future of migration and integration and considering its significance for policy development and strategic planning.

While information on flows and stocks has steadily improved, much remains to be done to improve monitoring of the integration outcomes of migrants and the linkage of this monitoring to the evaluation and development of integration policy. Governments can make efforts to predict migration flows and understand migration intentions, but they also need to build contingency plans for integration capacity in case of major disruptions (e.g. the recent sudden influx in Europe of Ukrainians seeking protection), designing policies that can respond flexibly to changing circumstances. Pilot programmes that can be evaluated and scaled are one way to think about programme design more flexibly.

One key step is to prepare for future changes by using anticipatory tools to detect and consider emerging needs, but to do so, reliable data is essential. To understand and be prepared for changing demands, policy makers need to know where migrants are located within their territory and what services they typically access based on a variety of characteristics – and on the individual level. Monitoring outcomes helps countries anticipate likely future needs and whether too much or too little integration is being provided. Linking of data systems avoids fragmentation and allows for better targeted spending. Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Sweden have all linked population and administrative registers to understand migrant needs. Australia’s uses the AMEP Reporting and Management System (ARMS) and Provider Student Management Systems to capture information regarding client learning objectives, skills, personal circumstances, proficiency ratings, assessment outcomes, and more. Canada’s Immigration Contribution Agreement Reporting Environment (iCARE) system connects automatically to IRCC’s administrative database which contains demographic information, using back-end data linkages. Data on a client’s goals and needs are collected by IRCC, and the iCARE system tracks whether clients are referred to training, monitoring how long after initial assessment the training is received and at which organisation it is occurring. The European Union Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU SILC) have both included special ad hoc modules on migrants’ outcomes in recent years; these experiences can inform improvements to the measurement of migrant outcomes in other surveys and countries.

There are challenges related to data collection and integration that should be considered and dealt with. Special efforts are needed to ensure that data collections cover and enable identification of the most vulnerable migrants, especially those who are unlikely to be reached through standard household surveys (OECD, 2019[61]). Data systems need to be adequately connected to response mechanisms to be useful. At the same time, countries need to consider questions around data privacy, including data access and security. New data systems require a high degree of collaboration and take time to develop, and once developed, they benefit from evaluation to ensure that the data is being communicated effectively. Should these challenges be addressed, however, countries will possess a high-potential new tool for helping new arrivals access the integration services they need in a timely manner, providing them with equality of opportunity.

Annex 8.A. Additional information on standard-setting bodies

Annex Table 8.A.1. Bodies responsible for standard-setting in OECD and EU countries

	Body responsible for approval/accreditation	Periodicity of review	Methods of approval/accreditation
Australia	Australian Skills Quality Authority (vocational education and training)	7 years (unless the service provider is less than 2 years old, then closer scrutiny)	Registered Training Organisations Standards 2015, part of the VET quality framework
Austria	Austrian Integration Fund (OIF)	3 years (certification)	Requirements are regulated by ordinance (teachers, course classification, participants, room concept, childcare options)
Belgium (Flanders)	Department of Education; Agency for Domestic Administration	Periodic	Content of the social orientation is standardised. For language, education inspectors visit schools, participate in lessons, interview teachers and review success percentages
Canada	Strategic Intake Unit, Settlement Network, Integrated Planning, Reporting and Systems division	Compliance is monitored by IRCC programme officers throughout life cycle	Submission of regular reports by service providers
Chile	n/a	n/a	n/a
Colombia	n/a	n/a	n/a
Croatia	–	–	–
Czech Republic	Ministry of the Interior	Annually	Providers go through a contract and subsidy process
Denmark	Danish Immigration Service (asylum centre operators); Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (test centres and language courses); municipal services are subject to external review (accountants, state‑level authorities)	4 years (new test centres may enter during the four year cycle); random inspection at every test cycle	For asylum centre operators, contract compliance is assessed through ongoing supervision. If a test centre does not comply with the regulations, the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration may withdraw the right to administer exams.
Estonia	Ministry of Culture supports independent research monitors	–	Feedback from adaptation courses and Estonian Integration Monitoring
Finland	Centres of Economic Development, Transport and the Environment	2‑4 years (integration tender)	Open tender
France	Office for Immigration and Integration (for CIR); Ministry of the Interior (DGEF/ DIAN) and the State services (for complementary actions)	Language courses are certified every 3 years	Public tender/calls for projects
Germany	Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF)	Varies, but maximum 5 years	Proof of meeting established requirements, quality control, on-site inspections, review of submitted documents
Greece	–	–	–
Iceland	Iceland Refugee Committee (the Ministers of Social Affairs and Children, Justice, and Foreign Affairs and International Development Co‑operation)	–	–
Ireland
Israel	–	–	–
Italy	Ministry of Labour – GD Immigration and Integration Policies; regions and cities	Annually (national accreditation review)	Requirements set by law, report presenting experience must be submitted
Japan	–	–	–
Korea	Ministry of Justice	2 years (will be raised to 3 years in 2022)	Public contest, evaluation, fact-finding survey
Latvia	Society Integration Fund (humanitarian social services); Civics and language courses are licensed under a national framework (each measure by the ministry with competency over the service)	Monthly quality checks (SIF); Licensing varies by local government	Supervision visit to check client cases and records, analyse practical activities and discuss solutions with specialists, focus groups with clients; Licensing methods vary by local governments
Lithuania	Refugee Reception Center		Public procurement
Luxembourg	Ministry of Education	–	–
Mexico	n/a	n/a	n/a
Netherlands	Courses must have Blik op Werk Foundation quality mark to be reimbursed	Annually	Star rating is assigned based on examination success rate and student satisfaction
New Zealand	Immigration New Zealand has primary responsibility, but other agencies have contracts as well (i.e. Ministry of Social Development manages accreditation of social sector partners)	n/a	n/a
Norway	Multiple units; The Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (for language training); IMDI (for interpreters)	3 years (for language training)	Supervision for compliance with regulations and approval conditions
Poland	Voivodeship (province‑level) unit for the Implementation of EU programmes	Irregular	n/a
Portugal	–	–	–
Romania	Various ministries depending on the service area	n/a	n/a
Slovak Republic	Various ministries depending on the service area	n/a	n/a
Slovenia	Government Office for the Support and Integration of Migrants	n/a	n/a
Spain	Deputy Directorate of Programs, within Directorate General of International Protection and Humanitarian Assistance, Secretary of State of Migrants	Annually	Evaluation of programs, services provided, and financial analysis
Sweden	Public Employment Service	Periodic – at a time and place chosen by the PES	Supervision visits, inspections and evaluations
Switzerland	Canton level; State Secretary for Migration (language certifications)	–	Fide certifications are for both courses and teachers. They define standards for the teaching plan, the organisation of the courses, and co‑ordination with the canton to guarantee course quality
Türkiye	n/a	n/a	n/a
United Kingdom	Independent agencies	–	–
United States	State Department (for resettlement agencies); Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) (for grantees)	Annually (State Department); HHS/ORR review varies	Panel review process for applications. Effectiveness is assessed through programme reports and onsite monitoring visits

Note: n/a = information is not applicable.

Source: OECD questionnaire on introduction measures for new arrivals 2021.