Topic of the thesis: Beyond dominant regime typology: can institutional complementarity of welfare, production and immigration regimes explain migrant integration?
Abstract: The massive influx of migrants poses an issue in terms of the integration of the host society. Thus, how the level of integration is different across countries and which factors affect the different levels of integration has been analysed. Much of the existing research employs comparative methods within dominant regime types, namely the welfare and production regimes which are indirectly related to the level of integration of migrants, but follow the typology of the respective regimes in order to explain the different levels of integration across countries. However, research which follows the typology as an analyzation frame cannot fully explain the differences sophisticatedly. This is because the regimes are configurated for the majority (natives), but not minorities. Therefore, no matter how such work tries to verify the different phenomenon with the regime typologies, it could not be compatible to the integration of migrants although migrants are indirectly affected by the regimes. In order to overcome the limitation and analyse the mechanism of migrant integration, this project employs the concept of institutional complementarity in order to explain this gap which has been regarded as comprising exceptional cases or outliers since they could not be explained by the dominant regime typologies. Thus, institutional complementarity is expected to verify whether the coordination between welfare, production and immigration regimes, the latter directly affecting migrants but not enough to explain integration with natives, would influence the different levels of migrant integration beyond the dominant regime typologies. Empirical research will proceed across 18 developed countries which have accumulated sufficient data regarding immigrants and social institutions (mostly European and Anglophone countries). Two hypotheses are tested with pooled time series-cross sectional data by employing factor analysis and structural equation model. This is since the set of institutions will be summarized as representative regimes and consequently the causality between the level of complementarity of regimes and integration will be examined. First, in terms of the impact of institutional complementarity of welfare and production regimes upon the immigration regime, Comparative Welfare Entitlements dataset ver.2 (welfare regime), OECD SOCX data regarding labour market institutions (production regime), and Migrant Integration Policy index (MIPEX; immigrant regime) will be employed. When it comes to second testing, the impact of the three regimes’ institutional complementarity on immigrant integration levels will be tested with the summarized regime variables and the integration of immigrants (provisionally regarding occupational outcomes in the labour market). The result of this study is expected to overcome limited explanations based on the discussion surrounding convergence of regime typology and contribute to the accurate policy analyzation by generalizing the mechanism founded on the institutionalism.
Research interests: Cross national comparative research with quantitative or mixed method - Migration Policy: Integration, skill formation and labour flow tendency (East to West) in Europe, female migrants, internal and South-South migration - Neoliberalism impacts on welfare state and labour market - Gender and labour Issues in North and South.
Graduated from: Dongduk Womens University, Seoul, Republic of Korea - Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea - University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
Degrees obtained: BA in Family Welfare & Community Services/ Business Economics (minor) - MA in in Social Policy - MRes (Master of Research) in International Development.
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