The talk proposes a standard measure of immigrant integration – i.e. the degree to which immigrants have the knowledge and the capacity to achieve success in their host society – that permits the comparison of immigrant communities over time and across contexts. To justify our measure, we first show the costs for a research community when every study relies on its own specification of what constitutes successful integration. We then adumbrate the criteria for a successful measure. Once set, we outline six dimensions of integration—psychological, economic, political, social, linguistic and navigational – each with a set of survey questions. With these questions, we run pretests to determine the degree to which our questions meet our criteria for a good measure, and to reduce our tool to six key questions that could be incorporated in all studies of integration at low cost. We report on the data we have so far collected and the issues they raise. However imperfect, we foresee substantial payoffs for scientific progress of community “buy in” for our measure.

Bio:
David D. Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his BA from Swarthmore College and then served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia and Grenada. He received his PhD in political science from UC Berkeley. Over his career, as a student of comparative politics, he has conducted field research in Somalia, Yorubaland (Nigeria), Catalonia (Spain), Estonia, and France, focusing on issues of language and religion, and how these cultural phenomena link nation to state. In collaboration with James Fearon, he has published papers on ethnic conflict and civil war; in collaboration with Alan Krueger, Eli Berman and Jacob Shapiro, has published papers on suicide terrorism. His most recent book “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies” (co-authored with Claire Adida and Marie-Anne Valfort) was published by Harvard University Press. He is currently co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford. He has been a recipient of grants from the Howard Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.