Local Migrant Integration Index
Overview
Overall, local authorities have made some progress in developing policies and practices to support and enhance migrant integration, but there is considerable room for improvement. The areas that have seen most progress are Tackling Racism, Voting and Local Migrant Integration Strategies. In contrast, areas such as integration within Local Authority Staffing and the Corporate Structures of local authorities are concerning in their lack of progress.
Based on the data that is available, this suggests that while local authorities are progressing integration of migrant communities in their programming and external services, they are not making progress on areas to do with their internal structures, staffing, funding allocation and diversity.
We also assessed the quality and extent of data collection by local authorities in relation to migrant integration. This indicator was compiled using questions that related to data collection across the survey as a whole. No local authority scored more than 52% in the survey responses on data collection.
The average score across all local authorities was only 23%. This shows that there is a big challenge for local authorities in data collection across the board. It is not clear whether in general data is not being collected, or if the data is not able to be disaggregated on issues relating to the migrant community.
As background, we asked local authorities to indicate how the proportion of migrants in their area compared to the national average. For comparison, we provided figures from the 2016 Census, and we assessed their answers against 2016 results. Local authorities could indicate whether the proportion of migrants, EU migrants and non-EU migrants was roughly the same, considerably or slightly higher or lower. We found that many local authorities provided answers that were not consistent with the 2016 Census figures, with some considerably overestimating and others considerably underestimating the proportion of migrants in the local authority area. In total, 18 local authorities provided answers that were not consistent with official census figures. There appeared to be difficulties with correctly indicating the proportion of non-EU migrants living in many local authority areas.
