This dissertation is a multi-layered examination of the practice of voting, with a focus on the electoral turnout of immigrants. Chapter Two’s statistical analyses show that pre-migration cultural familiarity with democracy, formalized as levels of democratization in source countries, strongly shapes the likelihood of post-migration voting among Canadian immigrants. These origin effects, comparable in size to the best predictors of turnout that we have, exert a persistent influence – affecting turnout not only among the foreign-born, but also among the native-born second generation. Multilevel models demonstrate that the shifting source country composition of immigrant period-of-arrival cohorts provides an alternate explanation for what have previously been identified as generational, racial, and length of residence or ‘exposure’ effects among immigrant voters. This provides further evidence that voting is in most cases habitual, and raises questions about the acquisition, transmission, and reproduction of a voting practice. Chapter Three’s narratives of political development, gathered through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, confirm the importance of parental influence, and suggest that the ‘stickiness’ of practical capacities like voting may be the result of powerful processes of observational social learning. Providing a new twist on dominant models of political socialization, observation of parental voting appears to be the pivotal event in a path-dependent process of political learning, with acquisition of values and beliefs playing a supporting, rather than a leading role. Chapter Four reviews recent efforts among sociologists to amend action theory to make more room for habit, and these efforts are discussed in reference to contemporary research on turnout. I argue that these theoretical revisions still retain too sharp a focus on the cognitive aspects of practice. There is a lack of appreciation for the ways that action itself – our own previous actions and the actions of those close to us – can directly structure outcomes. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience is used to more precisely delineate habitual behaviour and thought. Where the intergenerational transmission of voting behaviour is concerned, culture is often coded directly into embodied practice. Efforts to encourage electoral participation should be built on a better understanding of voting’s substantial behavioural aspects.

This dissertation is a multi-layered examination of the practice of voting, with a focus on the electoral turnout of immigrants. Chapter Two’s statistical analyses show that pre-migration cultural familiarity with democracy, formalized as levels of democratization in source countries, strongly shapes the likelihood of post-migration voting among Canadian immigrants. These origin effects, comparable in size to the best predictors of turnout that we have, exert a persistent influence – affecting turnout not only among the foreign-born, but also among the native-born second generation. Multilevel models demonstrate that the shifting source country composition of immigrant period-of-arrival cohorts provides an alternate explanation for what have previously been identified as generational, racial, and length of residence or ‘exposure’ effects among immigrant voters. This provides further evidence that voting is in most cases habitual, and raises questions about the acquisition, transmission, and reproduction of a voting practice. Chapter Three’s narratives of political development, gathered through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, confirm the importance of parental influence, and suggest that the ‘stickiness’ of practical capacities like voting may be the result of powerful processes of observational social learning. Providing a new twist on dominant models of political socialization, observation of parental voting appears to be the pivotal event in a path-dependent process of political learning, with acquisition of values and beliefs playing a supporting, rather than a leading role. Chapter Four reviews recent efforts among sociologists to amend action theory to make more room for habit, and these efforts are discussed in reference to contemporary research on turnout. I argue that these theoretical revisions still retain too sharp a focus on the cognitive aspects of practice. There is a lack of appreciation for the ways that action itself – our own previous actions and the actions of those close to us – can directly structure outcomes. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience is used to more precisely delineate habitual behaviour and thought. Where the intergenerational transmission of voting behaviour is concerned, culture is often coded directly into embodied practice. Efforts to encourage electoral participation should be built on a better understanding of voting’s substantial behavioural aspects.

It is often said that European Immigration Policy has been converged to civic integration policy, which requires immigrants to learn the culture, history, and language etc. of the host country. That trend of convergence is sometimes regarded as the European retreat from multiculturalism, and sometimes even as convergence to the assimilationism, and so called 'fortress Europe.' This doctoral thesis is aiming at attaining more sophisticated understanding of this phenomena, by conducting analyses both at the national level and European level. At national level, it challenges the common wisdom that civic integration basically aims at restricting migrants and tries to revalorize national citizenship, through comparative analysis of the Dutch and the German party politics at the stage of legislating key national civic integration policy. By doing so, it found that the diversity of national civic integration policy from liberal to restrictive. At the EU level, it challenges the assumption that the EU played a role in uploading national interests and promoted European convergence towards restrictive immigration policy. Through the analysis of each EU institution's attitude and their influence over national immigration policy. It tries to figure out the processes of negative Europeanization where the effects of EU laws and soft governance tools of the commission actually pre-emptively guide the national policy towards rather modest civic integration, and even prohibited national member states from adopting very restrictive policy at national level. From the combination of those findings, the thesis tries to propose new model of immigrant integration and citizenship acquisition, that is, 'phased integration model'. It interprets the convergence towards civic integration as institutionalization of immigrant integration path in each member states. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The number of immigrants has been increasing in the Czech Republic. Along with adult immigrants come also their children and this causes an increase of foreigners in Czech schools. In this diploma thesis it is examined, in what way Prague primary schools cope with the increase of children foreigners in their classrooms. Through interviews and questionnaire survey it is observed what opinions and beliefs are taken by representatives of primary schools in Prague on the issue of foreigners in education, whether they have any specific conceptions that focus on helping foreigners with integration into the Czech school system and at the same time into the majority society. Considering the fact that the process of integration is complicated and during the process a number of obstacles usually occur, it depends not only on the activities of each particular school, but also on the degree of support from the state, and on a child-foreigner himself and on his family, whether the process of integration will eventually be successful or not. For these reasons in the diploma thesis there is also examined the legislative framework defining the issue of education and integration of children-foreigners, financial and methodological support for schools by the Ministry of Education, and the role of children-foreigners and...

Some researchers argue that the immigrant integration approaches in liberal (and “Western-“) states are becoming more and more alike. Some claim that the previous philosophises of integration (i.e. multiculturalism, segregationism, universalism and assimilationism) no longer exists in liberal states. This study assesses the robustness of this “convergence claim” within an East-EU context. The purpose of the study is to analyse the policy trends of immigrant integration in the East-EU and assess the robustness of the convergence claim. The analysis and methodological approach is based on a theoretical framework of ideal-types (multiculturalism, segregationism, universalism and assimilationism). The study objects are Estonia and Poland, and the analysis is primarily based on national legislation and policy documents. The study describes the immigrant integration trends in Poland and Estonia in the “post-Soviet era”, looking at the policy trends between 1991-2008. During this period both countries have shown tendencies of segregationism and cultural monism. It is clear that Estonia and Poland (i.e. parts of East-EU) have not adopted a more “Western-style” approach regarding immigrant integration, i.e. there is no evidence of such convergence. In fact, the ethnic component of their immigrant integration approaches stands in contrast to the “convergence thesis”.