Icelanders' expectations and immigrants' ideas on the integration of immigrants into Icelandic society

Abstract

What are the prevailing ideas about how immigrants become part of Icelandic society? This paper joins previous studies in investigating the relationship between attitudes towards the integration of immigrants and socio-demographic variables. Our studies gathered data from a convenience sample of immigrants and a random sample of Icelanders in twelve municipalities. This paper describes reported attitudes. It further examined the relationship between the social background of the respondents (age, gender, education, income, labour market position and place of residence) and whether their attitudes could be categorized as assimilation or integration. We ran descriptive statistics and a linear regression analysis of the relationship between socio-demographic variables and integration expectations. Results indicate that both immigrants and locals felt that immigrants should try to learn Icelandic. Immigrants reported higher levels of expectation for other immigrants compared to locals. Higher age, being male and lower education are factors associated with increased expectations of assimilation into Icelandic society. Inconsistent with previous studies, our findings suggest there is little to no relationship between the proportion of immigrants in their communities and Icelandic respondents‘ attitudes towards immigrant integration-assimilation.