Residential Integration – Towards A Sending Country Perspective

This position paper explores the key issues relating to how residential integration – a foundation dimension of migrant and minority integration – might be understood and further researched from a “country of origin” perspective. The paper covers the existing state of the art and methodology used in the field, before arguing for a shift to a country of origin perspective, beyond simply using country of origin as a variable in determining residential integration outcomes, but instead re-framing the issue in a transnational perspective. It introduces a new theoretical and methodological framing, shifting the emphasis from a static “social physics” to a processual, pathway-focused approach.