The Lisbon Strategy of the EC (March 2000) acknowledges that the integration of migrants in cultural and social life serves to enhance the potential of European society for competitiveness, sustainable economic growth and greater social cohesion. In the Communication to the Council (2003) the EC lists, alongside young migrants, migrant women as a group that should be taken into account in formulating integration policies.

The FeMiPol project responds to these challenges by exploring and analysing the impact of integration policies on the position of migrant women within EU countries as a basis for the development of recommendations for appropriate integration policies. A central assumption is that integration policies should attend to the agency of the persons involved.

Therefore, the analysis of integration processes focuses not only on barriers for social integration and on their removal, but also on the strategies and life plans of the female migrants. On the basis of an agency sensitive biographical evaluation of policy, the project will formulate recommendations for better policies, both on the national and EU level, aimed at the integration of female migrants.

Link: http://www.femipol.uni-frankfurt.de/

FeMiPol strated in February 2006 and will run until January 2008. The research work is divided in seven phases:

• Migration policy assessment at both, national and EU level.
• Key informant interviews focusing on policy formation and policy implementation.
• Statistical analysis of migration flows of female migrants’ labour.
• Analysis of demand for female migrant’s labour.
• Conduction and analysis of biographical interviews with female migrants.
• Interaction analysis of encounters of female migrants with social service officers.
• Comparative analysis of the collected data and policy recommendations.
  

The analysis will cover eleven European countries: Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

European Comission, 6th Framework Programme