The six immigration countries studied in this book have experienced a period of large-scale immigration caused mainly by similar factors. None of these countries had planned or even foreseen an international migration of the size that actually occurred. Their reaction to this migration has been strikingly similar and at the same time decisively different, but in the long run immigration control has become more strict everywhere and active labor recruitment has been stopped; at the same time, there have been a number of improvements in the social and cultural situation of immigrants.

Selecting six countries

The project countries have been chosen partly because of their size and their large immigrant populations and partly because they offer a high degree of variation in the regulation of immigration and in immigrant policy. Germany, France and Britain were included from the outset because of their sizeable immigrant populations, and Switzerland because of its high proportion of foreigners. In addition these four countries provide examples of very different sorts of international migration as well as different immigration policies. Sweden could not be left out, partly because the initiative and financing of this study was Swedish, but more important it deserves a place as the Scandinavian country which has both admitted the most immigrants and developed first a specific immigration policy. The Netherlands was included as the sixth country because of its mixture of post-colonial and Mediterranean labor immigration, and also because of its traditional emphasis on cultural pluralism and its influence on current “ethnic minorities” policy.