ABSTRACT
Migrations play an important role in changing the socio-demographic picture of our world, which is said to be ‘on the move’. According to the Eurostat (2011) news release, there are more than 32 million third country nationals (TCNs) living in the EU; while countries such as Germany, Spain, the UK and France respectively host 7.2 million, 5.6 million, 3.8 million and 4 million immigrants each. In this context, the issue of integration of immigrants has been frequently discussed by both scholars and policy-makers (Banting 2012; Banting and Kymlicka 2013; Collett and Petrovic 2014). All existing migration discourses stress that immigrants must be integrated into their new societies (Zincone 2000; Penninx and Martiniello 2004; Biles 2008). However, integration remains an ambivalent concept, which points to an increasing gap between its theory and practice, especially when affected by globalisation and the current economic crisis.
