1.4 Importance of Social Integration
A 1994 briefing paper by United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) for the World Summit for Social Development highlighted that “social integration” held different meanings to different people — for some, social integration was a positive process about encouraging harmonious interactions between diverse communities in society, and providing equal rights and opportunities for everyone. The Panel on the Integration of Immigrants into American Society (2015) recognised that integration was a two-way process between immigrants and locals; immigrants experienced change upon arrival in their new host countries, and natives adapted to the presence of immigrants. These changes could be seen in areas of “education, employment and earnings, occupations, poverty, residential integration, language, health, crime, and family patterns” by comparing across generations of immigrants and natives.
For example, the Panel’s research showed that in US, foreign-born immigrants had a life expectancy of 80.0 years, 3.4 years longer than that of the US-born population, but over generations, this advantage eroded and converged with the US-born. The number of inter-racial or inter-ethnic marriages in the US had also doubled (15.1% in 2010), when compared to a generation ago in 1980 (6.7%). Brown (2013) showed how ethnic segregation and diversity could be mapped by converting…
