Nationality Policies in the Books and in Practice: Comparing Immigrant Naturalisation across Europe.

This article explores whether differences in the implementation of nationality laws explain gaps between nationality laws and nationality acquisition across Europe. Previous research confirms that nationality acquisition among the foreign-born in Western European countries is largely determined by the inclusiveness of nationality policies and the characteristics of the immigrant population. Drawing on recent data on nationality procedures across Europe, this article argues that, regardless of the nationality laws in place, nationality procedures create major obstacles for different types of immigrants. This article uses data from the European Social Survey to conduct multi-level analysis of nationality acquisition in 17 European countries among long-settled foreign-born adult arrivals, controlling for their individual, origin and destination country characteristics. The analysis finds that nationality procedures are as important as nationality laws for nationality acquisition among most immigrants living in Europe today, especially for immigrants who are most likely to benefit and apply: immigrants from developing countries.

The MIPEX Health strand: a longitudinal, mixed-methods survey of policies on migrant health in 38 countries.

BACKGROUND: Within health systems, equity between migrants and native-born citizens is still a long way from being achieved. Benchmarking the equitability of policies on migrant health is essential for monitoring progress and identifying positive and negative aspects of national policies. For this purpose, the 2015 round of the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) was expanded to include a strand on health, in a collaborative project carried out between 2013 and 2017 in 38 countries. METHODS: Indicators of policies to promote equity were derived from the 2011 Recommendations of the Council of Europe on 'mobility, migration and access to health care' and used to construct a questionnaire compatible with MIPEX methodology. This yielded scores for Entitlement, Accessibility, Responsiveness and Measures to achieve change. RESULTS: As a measuring instrument, the questionnaire has a high degree of internal consistency, while exploratory factor analysis showed a coherent relationship between its statistical structure and the four scales it comprises. Measures to achieve change were strongly associated with Responsiveness, but not at all with Entitlements and only slightly with Accessibility. Examining the results from the sub-sample of 34 'European' countries, wide variations in the equitability of policies were found: these were mainly associated with a country's wealth (GDP), but differences between EU13 and EU15 countries were too extreme to explain completely in such terms. CONCLUSIONS: The MIPEX Health strand is a robust measurement tool that has already yielded a number of important results and is providing a valuable resource for both researchers and policy-makers.