Relationship between immigrant integration and socioeconomic indicators of European immigrant-receiving countries

Integration is a two-way process depending on host countries, and the immigrants. Immigrants' successful integration in the host countries is an important issue bringing benefits for both immigrants and the host countries. Immigrants receiving countries' migration policies, actions, and peoples' perception towards accepting foreign citizens is an essential factor in the successful integration process. However, the integration process in a specific geographical region, such as Europe, also differs from one country to another. The integration process depends on the socioeconomic position, and development of the host and home countries. It also depends on the types of migration, migrants' status, etc. Therefore, this study tries to investigate and explain the typology and socioeconomic characteristics of European immigrant receiving countries regarding integration policies. It discusses the relationship between Human Development Index, Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, Social Progress Index, Gross National Income, Internet users % of the population, Ranking of Happiness, Happiness Ranking for the Foreign-Born, KOF Globalization index, and Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). This study uses a descriptive-analytical method, to show the socioeconomic characteristics of European immigrant-receiving countries. To show the strength of the relationship between the indexes, the study used pairwise correlation analysis (sig. level, 0.01). The main results of the study show that Northern and Western European countries have more favorable integration policies for immigrants than Southern and Eastern European countries. Moreover, there is a mutual positive interrelationship between all the indexes. The happier the citizens of the host countries are, the happier the immigrants are and the more favorable the integration policies are for immigrants.


Introduction
The estimated number of international migrants has drastically increased over the last 50 years and reached 281 million people in 2021, which is 3.6 % of the world's population. Europe as the largest destination for international migrants; hosts more than 87 million migrants, almost 31 % of the global migrant population, live in Europe. European countries play an essential role in the world's migration process, patterns, and trends, that shows the need to develop policies to facilitate migration problems, and the integration process of international migrants. Migration and integration policies worldwide could positively or negatively change the migration patterns. It can end with a lack of access to socio-economic resources, fewer jobs, poor health, and missed opportunities for immigrants [1], and it affects the host countries' population.
Host countries' role in welcoming immigrants is essential to attracting and retaining them. However, the immigrant's integration process is a two-way process that depends on the immigrants themselves and the host countries' population and policies. Although immigrants compensate for the demographic loss of European countries, increase productivity and economic growth [2]. Today, European countries face criticism from media, political parties, and nationalists because of the socioeconomic conditions religious, cultural, and language differences between the immigrants and population of the host countries [3]. Therefore, the cultural heterogeneity in countries and economic disparities have always been the core of migrant integration debates. The cultural heterogeneity affects both citizens of host countries who are skeptical about the benefits of immigration and immigrants who find it difficult to be integrated into a new society [4]. Therefore, the integration of immigrants in contemporary society is essential for the host countries to benefit from immigration. Because the more they are integrated, the more they can bring advantages to the host countries 1 .
Many studies show the role and responsibility of immigrants during the integration process. However, the contribution of host countries in accepting immigrants is as vital as the role of immigrants. Finding socioeconomic characteristics of immigrant-receiving countries provides a snapshot of countries' development positions in the world. It helps the countries to know what direction they are behind, what they need to change, etc. And immigrants can understand which countries have the most suitable situation and favorable policies in attracting and retaining immigrants. Therefore, this study aims at investigating and explaining the socioeconomic characteristics and typology of immigrant-receiving countries in Europe. To better understand and compare the position of the countries in terms of integration policies and socioeconomic development in Europe, we also categorize the countries in four geographical locations, Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Europe.

Literature review
In the study of M. Shamsuddin and M. S. Katsaiti, Germany, with a shrinking population and a rising dependency ratio, needs young migrants, willing and able to integrate within the society and actively participate in its economic progress. To devise successful immigration and integration policies, policymakers should be aware of the factors affecting migrants' intentions and decisions. They explore the impact of different measures of subjective well- being on the intended duration of migration stay. Also, they utilize more detailed data on the year length of the intended stay. This way, they could estimate the marginal effects of happiness on each additional year of stay. They found out that migrants who are happy with life tend to stay permanently in the host country. Also, results suggested that spouse residence location, education, and personal income affect male intentions to remain, while peer income and the number of children affect female preferences to stay. Depending on government priorities and country needs, mainly in the labor market, identifying the determinants of stay decisions allows policymakers to formulate policies encouraging or discouraging certain groups to stay in Germany longer. Ideally, the source country would be interested in incentivizing the high-skilled, highly productive employees to stay for economic and social reasons [5].
Regardless of public opinion, welcome, and perceptions of the ability to integrate, the host country needs immigrants to integrate fully and efficiently, and it is a shared responsibility between the host and the immigrant. The host must provide the opportunity and resources for integration in exchange for the economic benefits offered by the immigrant; the immigrant must utilize these resources and make a commitment to the host country in exchange for expected opportunities. Both must work in tandem for the success of the integration process [6].
In another study among a sample of Polish residents and households, the impact of individual and household subjective well-being on the ex-ante international migration intentions and ex-post actual migration decisions analyzed. Results showed that unhappier persons were more likely to intend to migrate abroad but that this individual unhappiness did not mean that intentions materialized into actual migration in subsequent years. They also showed that the average level of (un)happiness within a household and individuals' relative position in terms of subjective well-being within the family significantly impacted migration intentions. Still, the effect of unhappiness on actual migration was found only for some sub-groups such as women and currently employed individuals [7]. Consequently, the relationship between Poland's labor market situation and international migration is not straightforward. Although some individuals left Poland because of poor economic prospects, many others moved abroad only for temporary stays, as it is reflected in research. Moreover, despite Poland's economic boom, the twenty-first century's second decade was still marked by a substantial increase in Poles temporarily residing abroad, from 2.06 million in 2011 to 2.46 million in 2018 [8].
The study of A. Tatarko et al. based on European data uses multilevel analysis to clarify the relations between migrant integration policy (both as a whole and its eight separate components) and the subjective well-being of the non-immigrant population in European countries. They examined relations between the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) for 22 countries in Europe and subjective well-being, as assessed by the European Social Survey (ESS) data. The results demonstrated a positive relation between the MIPEX and subjective well-being for non-immigrants. Researchers considering different components of the MIPEX separately, found out that most of them are positively related to the subjective well-being of non-immigrants. As no negative relationship was identified between any of the eight MIPEX components and subjective well-being, policies favoring immigrant integration also seem to benefit from the non-immigrant population [9].
Many European countries have declared a retreat from the efforts to maintain and develop multicultural policies with outright claims that immigrants are rarely fully involved in host countries, which leads to an obstacle to the unity of society and social integration. Accordingly, they have shifted their focus from multicultural to immigrant integration. The retreat can be regarded as a new version of multiculturism because of the similarity between the two policies. Still, the explicit main goal of the immigrant integration policies is to foster social cohesion and solidarity for both social integration and immigrants' adaptation to new countries. The study of S. Choi and Y. K. Cha finds that well-developed integration policies in education increase immigrant students' patriotic pride and consequently narrow the gap between native and immigrant students in terms of patriotic pride. The extent to which immigrant students are integrated into host countries partly depends on how the government provides them with a supportive environment and opportunities to participate in host countries actively [10].
On the one hand, education is influential for immigrant integration because the quality of education is one of the main parts of human development. Therefore, a study has been conducted to explore the impact of people's happiness level, research and development expenditure, and social globalization on the quality of education. Researchers collected data from different Asian countries for 27 years from reliable databases, and other approaches were run on that data for analysis purposes. The results showed the significant impact and the connection of these three aspects on the quality of education. Social globalization, research and development, and per capita income have substantial implications for the quality of education. Indeed, these relations between indicators demonstrate the interconnection of the indexes [11].
In the study of Kogan et al., by adopting the multilevel analysis, the immigrants become more satisfied in countries where there is more openness to welcome immigrants. In countries with higher human development, immigrants' life satisfaction will increase. In addition, if the countries have higher economic inequality, the immigrants' life satisfaction tends to decline; however, the highly educated immigrants do not consider economic inequality as an obstacle to their satisfaction [12].
The study of A. Paparusso offers state-of-the-art research on self-reported life satisfaction as a subjective measure of immigrant integration, showing the most significant research findings and methodological challenges. To this end, the study presents a comparative empirical analysis of self-reported life satisfaction among first-generation immigrants living in seven European countries, measuring the effectiveness of both individual and country-level factors. Data are drawn from the Immigrant Citizens Survey (ICS), 2011-2012. The empirical results show that self-reported life satisfaction depends on immigrants' demographic characteristics and human capital elements, such as age, marital status, current economic situation, and perceived financial well-being. 'Immigration' variables, namely legal status, and country of residence, also play a role in defining immigrants' life satisfaction. As for country-level factors, the proportion of non-EU foreign citizens, naturalization rate, citizenship of the country of residence, unemployment rate, and Human Development Index (HDI) 2 are significant factors that influence immigrants' self-reported life satisfaction in European countries. Thus, confirming that not only individual characteristics but also receiving contexts matter for immigrants' subjective well-being [13].
The study of Debraj Roka in 2020 proves the strongly linear positive association and statistically significant result between the human development index with happiness 2 Human Development Index (HDI). UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME. Human development reports. URL: https://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi (accessed: 15.02.2022) in the overall 120 sampling countries that the high rank of the human development indexes provides a high level of happiness among the people. The investigation analyzed the 1080 observations using 2008 to 2016, including 120 countries. The study investigated the positive association between economic growth and income with happiness, it also indicated a positive association between government health expenditures and food on happiness rate [14].
Indeed, the economy is an essential part of human development which growth in the economy can show the happiness of society. From 2013 to 2018, Taiwan's Happiness scores have been rising. To testify this issue, researchers took 3600 articles from one of Taiwan's most used social media-Gossiping boards to identify Taiwanese emotion from 2015 to 2017. The annual increase of GDP and GNI both have a noticeable positive relationship with the people's sentiment extracted from the Taiwan forum. The result illustrates that the GDP used by all Nations to evaluate and compare the economic growth can reflect people's sense of happiness [15].
The development and happiness of the society are measured in many types of research based on criteria that are not purely economic. Although the relevance of GDP / capita in the analyses and reports has been highly discussed and disputed, the standard of living and quality of life in the world states still proves to be an indispensable but insufficient source of information. As a consequence, alongside the media coverage of all macroeconomic outcomes, the popularization of complementary indices such as the Social Progress Index (SPI) would lead to an increase in the level of information and, implicitly, a growth of the expectations and involvement of civil society as a stakeholder of national economies [16].
The study of Grigorii Feigin gave the interpretation of the term «globalization» and differences to other terms characterizing the development of the world economy. The main signs of globalization including indicating dynamic trade volumes, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows, portfolio investments, international credits; internalization of technical progress; digitalization of economy; development of regional economic integration, global migration; transnational corporations (TNC) activities; transformation processes in the former socialistic countries. The influences of international activities of governments on the level of GDP per capita are highlighted. The empirical basics are data of KOF-Index. The sample includes countries with both middle and low income which held positions in the ranking in KOF-Index from 27 till 182 3 . The positive interdependence between (based on the KOF-Index) and the level of GDP is identified [17].
The impacts of information and communication technology on development have been investigated mainly from their contributions to a country's economic growth. Nonetheless, ICT can present individuals with much more than just financial income, and it can improve many characteristics of their quality of life. A study applied data panel technique to a sample of 145 countries to explore how the use and adoption of ICT by people, companies, and governments, affect human development, as measured by the Social Progress Index (SPI) and Human Development Index (HDI). The outcomes indicate that regardless of a country's level of development, the individual use of ICT has a positive effect on human development. Concerning the impact of government use of ICT on human development, it has been confirmed that it is substantial in the developed countries. Similarly, ICTs for commercial goals positively influence human development globally. Still, if we make the analysis considering only developed countries, the relationship of this variable with human development is no longer significant [18].

Methodology
This research is quantitative research where the data are retrieved from international indexes. To reach our goal this study uses different indexes which are widely used to explain the socioeconomic positions of the countries in the world, such as Human Development Index (HDI) to explain the dimensions of human development, health, education and standard of living, Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) 4  These indexes were chosen due to their suitability for the research aim to find out the socioeconomic characteristics of European immigrant-receiving countries and how they have a relationship with immigrants' integration in the European countries. Overall, 38 countries from four geographical locations of Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Europe, which are members of the Council of Europe, presented in MIPEX, have been chosen.
The methodology in this study is designed based on the theoretical framework developed for this study (See Figure 1). This study uses nominal scales provided by the indexes above, which are mutually exclusive to each other. To measure and show the relationships between the indexes, this study uses pairwise correlation analysis in STATA, with a significant level of 0.01. The study's central hypothesis (H1) is that immigrant integration and happiness level in the immigrant-receiving countries are positively correlated with HDI, IHDI, SPI, IU, GNI, RH, and KOF. Moreover, the study uses The EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) to analyze the relationship between the integration of immigrants and the English language proficiency level of the immigrant-receiving countries. The following framework for this study is designed to show the relationships between our indexes. 4 The IHDI combines a country's average achievements in health, education, and income with how those achievements are distributed among country's population by "discounting" each dimension's average value according to its level of inequality. The IHDI is distribution-sensitive average level of human development. Two countries with different distributions of achievements can have the same average HDI value. Under perfect equality the IHDI is equal to the HDI but falls below the HDI when inequality rises.

Results of the research
The result of this study shows that among the four geographical regions of Europe in average countries of Northern Europe (59), Western Europe (57), Southern Europe (51), and Eastern Europe (43) have the highest to the lowest MIPEX score respectively. Not all international immigrants have access to the labor market, or in some countries, public jobs are not offered to foreigners. In Northern (59) and Western Europe (59), this indicator is equal; Southern Europe (52) and Eastern Europe (38) have a less favorable situation. In the countries such as France, Latvia, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Turkey self-employment are limited and desired for national citizens only. In Greece, France, Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Russia, and Switzerland skills and qualification have no guidelines or recognition for certain nationalities or fields of study.
Family reunion, the ability of temporary residents to sponsor their spouse/partner, and reuniting with other relatives is halfway favorable in Western Europe (42), Northern Europe (53), and Eastern Europe (54); the family reunion indicator is slightly promising in Southern Europe (60). Some countries include Czechia, Portugal, Russia, and Slovenia. The family member can benefit from the facilitated rules in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Malta. In contrast, the family reunion is limited in other countries such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK and requires language and integration capability. Pre-entry language requirements are also in a few countries, such as Austria, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK.
The legal right to access compulsory and non-compulsory education for legal and undocumented immigrants and the obstacles they face in accessing higher education, etc., is under the education category. Eastern Europe (24) and Southern Europe (39) have a slightly unfavorable situation in terms of education indicator, Northern Europe (57) and Western Europe (55) have a halfway favorable position. Supports to increase immigrants' access to and successful participation in higher education are available only in Finland.
A health indicator is slightly favorable in Western Europe (68), halfway promising in Northern Europe (59) and Southern Europe (50), and countries of Eastern Europe (36) have a slightly unfavorable situation. Germany imposes conditions for emergency care on immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, while in Switzerland there is no barrier for immigrants either undocumented migrants or legal immigrants. Political participation indicator, having rights to vote and voting in local elections, is halfway favorable in Northern (57) and Western Europe (54) and it is slightly unfavorable in Southern Europe (26). It is unfavorable in Eastern countries (13). Among the EU countries local elections for voting is only possible for non-EU immigrants in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The permanent resident scheme and the wait for permanent residence is slightly favorable in Northern (66), Eastern (63), and Southern (60) European countries. It is halfway good among the Western countries (56).
Access to the nationality indicator, citizenship entitlements for children born or educated in the country to foreign parents, dual nationality is halfway favorable in Northern (51), Western (50), and Southern (44) countries, and it is slightly unfavorable in Eastern (38) countries. All the regions have slightly favorable situations regarding anti-discrimination policies discrimination prohibition based on nationality, race, ethnicity, and religion. The most prohibited discrimination in MIPEX listed countries is employment and vocational training and education, but less often in social protections and supply of goods and services. Eastern European countries (76), Southern countries (74) have the highest score, Northern and Western countries (73) are located the next.
Among the Eastern European countries, Bulgaria has the highest value in the antidiscrimination score (100). Among the Northern European countries, Sweden and Finland have the highest score in antidiscrimination (100), and Lithuania has the lowest score in political participation (5). In Southern Europe, North Macedonia and Portugal have the highest score (100) in anti-discrimination, and at the same time, North Macedonia has a critically unfavorable situation in terms of political participation (0). In Western Europe, Belgium has the highest score (100) in anti-discrimination, and Austria has the least score (13) and the unfavorable situation in access to nationality. In general, among all the listed countries below, on average, the anti-discrimination indicators have the highest values.
Immigrant-receiving countries' economic, social, cultural, and political characteristics can be essential factors in accepting foreign nationals. Table 1 shows that the Western and Northern European countries have the highest socioeconomic indicators. Southern and Eastern European countries have similar characteristics lower than Northern and Western European countries. The level of satisfaction of the citizens of these countries with their living conditions paves the way for the acceptance and integration of immigrants in these countries.
High levels of education, culture, income, and social services lead citizens to integrate into the global community, meet more people from other parts of the world, or become acquainted with different cultures and people through the Internet. All issues related to these indicators in European countries result from globalization, or globalization is the result of the increase of these indicators. These factors lead to an increased level of life satisfaction and happiness among the citizens of these countries as well. By immigrants' cooperation to be integrated and their acceptance by the citizens of the host countries, the level of satisfaction and happiness of immigrants will increase. As a result, they will be better integrated into their new environment in the host country. Indeed, the knowledge and level of language fluency of immigrants in the host countries are critical factors in their integration process in these countries. However, in many European countries, immigrants usually use English as their second language or international language (except for those whose mother tongue is the specific language of that country). Thus, the English language skills of the people of the host countries can be an essential factor in helping immigrants who are at least fluent in English integrate into these societies until the immigrants become fluent in the original language of that country. In the analysis of this study, although there is no relationship between the English language proficiency level of the people of the host countries (EF EPI) with the MIPEX index of integration at the sig. level 0.01. (sig. 0.0160, Corr. Coeff. 0.4290 (table 2), this relationship weakly exits at the significance level of 0.05. However, specifically for 27 European Union countries, this study did not find any relationship between the host countries' English language proficiency level and the integration of immigrants. However, people's English language proficiency level in the host country has a significant positive correlation with HDI, IHDI, SPI, HRFB, RH, KOF, and IU. EF EPI has the strongest correlation with the KOF globalization index (sig. 0.0000, Corr. Coeff. 0.7302), which shows the importance of English language proficiency level in the globalization process. Table 2 shows that all other indexes are mutually interrelated and correlated with each other, although some of the correlation coefficients are not very strong. The highest level of correlation belongs to IHDI with HDI (sig. 0.0000, Corr. Coeff. 0.9566), and SPI with HDI (sig. 0.0000, Corr. Coeff. 0.9450), which shows that the more the countries are developed with higher HDI, the higher social progress they have. The results also show a significant strong positive correlation between all the indexes with Ranking of Happiness (RH) of the host countries' people and Happiness Ranking for the Foreign-Born (HRFB). RH of host countries' people has the strongest correlation with HDI (sig. 0.0000, Corr. Coeff. 0.8963); the higher the HDI, the happier the population of the host countries is. There is also a robust positive correlation between the Ranking of Happiness (RH) of the host countries' people and the Happiness Ranking for the Foreign-Born (HRFB) (sig. 0.0000, Corr. Coeff. 0.9205), which shows the importance of communities' happiness in the acculturation process of immigrants. The happier the foreign-born immigrants, the better they are integrated in the host country (sig. 0.0001, Corr. Coeff. 0.6013).
There is also a strong positive correlation between the KOF globalization index and social progress index (sig. 0.0000, Corr. Coeff. 0.8470), showing the two-way importance of globalization and social progress on each other. However, RH has a strong positive correlation with KOF, and the HRFB has a moderate correlation with KOF (sig. 0.0002, Corr. Coeff. 0.5811). HRFB is less dependent on the globalization level of the countries, but indirectly through RH, it is strongly correlated. All the indexes except EF EPI are correlated with the MIPEX integration index at sig. level. 0.01. however, the correlations coefficients do not show a substantial value. The weakest correlation is Internet users (% of the population) IU and MIPEX (sig. 0.0082, Corr. Coeff. 0.4229). This shows a soft direct effect of % of the people who use the internet on the integration process of immigrants. All the indexes lead to HRFB in the host countries, and there is almost a strong relationship between HRFB and MIPEX integration index. Figure 1 shows that Sweden and Finland have the highest MIPEX integration value, 86 and 85, respectively; at the same time, Finland has the highest HRFB value, 7.662, and Sweden also has a high HRFB, 7.184. Among these countries, Russia has less than average, the lowest MIPEX integration value (31), while it has more than average HRFB among the Eastern European countries (5.548). Bulgaria has the weakest HRFB value (4.393) among Eastern European countries, lower 10 Source: Designed for this study. than average, and its MIPEX integration index total weight is 40. In general, the Northern and Western European countries have a better situation in terms of both Happiness Ranking for the Foreign-Born and MIPEX integration index and in general, among other indicators. While Eastern and Southern European countries have almost a similar situation not only in terms of HRFB and MIPEX but also in all other indexes.

Conclusion
The results show that the integration process and policies differ among European countries. Southern and Eastern European countries have similar characteristics and lower rates than Northern and Western European countries. Among the four geographical European regions, Northern, Western, Southern, and Eastern European countries have the highest to the lowest favorable integration policies for immigrants. Access to the labor market is not equal for immigrants and natives. Family reunion is halfway favorable in Western, Northern, and Eastern Europe, and it is slightly promising in Southern Europe. Eastern and Southern Europe have a slightly unfavorable situation regarding education indicators. The health indicator is slightly favorable in Western Europe; halfway promising in Northern and Southern Europe, and countries in Eastern Europe have a slightly unfavorable situation. Political participation is halfway favorable in Northern and Western Europe, and it is slightly unfavorable in Southern Europe, and it is unfavorable in Eastern countries. The wait for permanent residence is slightly favorable in Northern, Eastern, and Southern European countries. Access to the nationality indicator, is halfway favorable in Northern, Western, and Southern countries, and it is slightly unfavorable in Eastern European countries. And all the regions share almost slightly favorable situations regarding anti-discrimination policies.
The level of life satisfaction and life happiness of the host countries' citizens improves the integration process of immigrants. Socioeconomic status of the immigrant receiving countries, level of globalization, sociocultural progress, income and education level, level of internet usage, and human development increase the acceptance of foreigners. Globalization level of the countries has positive relationship with development level and higher HDI leads to higher happiness among the host countries' natives. There is also a positive significant correlation between the natives' ranking of happiness, immigrants' happiness, and immigrants' integration in the host countries. All the indexes in this study are mutually interrelated and correlated. Integration of immigrants in the host countries is a two-way process, and it depends on the immigrants themselves and the people in the host country. In order to benefit immigration, besides the immigrants' efforts, the host countries must concentrate on increasing the socioeconomic well-being of their citizens, as the results showed the higher the socio economic well-being of the population the higher the integration index of immigrants.