Social cohesion, social exclusion, social capital

Summary: At a time of low birth rates, labour shortages and growing elder dependency in Western industrialized countries, South-North migration has become an indispensable resource for economic survival, societal renewal and nation building. Much of the academic and policy attention regarding the implications of immigration flows from the global South, and the resulting ethnic diversity on social cohesion has focused on the national level. However, immigrant integration is a process that plays out at both the national and local level, and so there is now growing public policy interest in the process at the municipal and regional levels.