Description

Karen Schönwälder, Dr. phil. habil., is Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Previously she was head of the Programme on Intercultural Conflicts and Societal Integration at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and Privatdozentin at the Free University Berlin. She obtained a Dr. phil from Marburg University in 1990 and completed her Habilitation in political science in 2001 at Gießen University. Past positions include a lectureship at the University of London and a semester as visiting professor at Haifa University, Israel.

Karen Schönwälder is a member of the editorial board of the journal Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik. Her research interests concern political and broader societal responses to migration processes and the establishment of new minorities as well as various aspects of immigrant integration.

This paper discusses key features of the political incorporation of immigrants into host society structures and institutions. It begins with theoretical considerations of the specifics of political, as distinct from e.g. economic or social, integration. A further section outlines trends in political participation arguing that a participation gap is likely to persist in the coming decades. Nevertheless, an increasing number of individuals
with a migration background are appearing on the parliamentary stages of major European immigration countries. The paper identifies nationally specific constellations that enabled such careers and that shape the development of immigrant political elites in Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany. Although we can record slow progress, equal representation is unlikely to be achieved without determined intervention.