Measuring the Cultural Dimension of Migrant Integration and Integration Policy in the European Context: Dilemmas and Discussions1

Migrant integration is usually studied in four dimensions: economic, political, social and cultural. The cultural sphere seems to be the most ambiguous, but also the one that induces various interpretations as it touches upon core norms and values held both by migrants and by the receiving society. This paper aims to reconstruct research approaches to cultural integration and integration policy. Beside the receiving country's language, that is the obvious differentiating factor of cultural integration, other aspects have been defined: migrants' religion, knowledge of the receiving country's symbolic culture, maintenance and transmission of cultural patterns, cultural identity. Furthermore, indicators which appear to adequately measure the effectiveness of integration activities have been assigned to the predefined aspects of cultural integration. They have been confronted with indicators used within integration policies of selected EU states and with expert statements (collected within the Delphi method-based survey) on given aspects of policies aimed at cultural integration.