Summary

This report concerns persons who were required to participate in civic integration programmes in the Netherlands in 2022 under the Civic Integration Act 2021. It differentiates between asylum migrants who were required to participate in civic integration programmes on the one hand, and family and other migrants who were required to participate in civic integration programmes on the other hand. The report describes the demographic and educational characteristics of this group, the Pre-integration process, housing, regional distribution (up to the end of 2022) and the civic integration overseen by the municipalities. 

Population

Demographic characteristics
The 2022 cohort of persons required to participate in civic integration programmes numbers around 26.5 thousand. Approximately three quarters of these are asylum migrants (19 thousand) while around a quarter are family or other migrants (7.4 thousand). Asylum migrants are more likely to be men (60 percent) than women, while women make up the majority among family and other migrants (68 per cent). In both groups, the largest number of people required to participate in civic integration programmes are in the age group of 25-34 years. Around seven in ten asylum migrants originate from Middle Eastern countries: Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Iran and Iraq. With respect to family and other migrants, many originate from Morocco, Turkey, the Philippines, China and India.

The position within the household was determined when the migrant first moved to the relevant municipality. Among asylum migrants, around 56 percent moved to their municipality at the end of 2022. Of these, around one third of asylum migrants were part of a couple with children, and one in four were single. Over half of family and other migrants were part of a couple without children.

Education in the Netherlands
Most of those subject to the civic integration requirement had not attended any education in the Netherlands before beginning the civic integration process. However,  asylum migrants and 0.7 thousand family migrants and other migrants had attended some education in the Netherlands. Many of these have lived in the Netherlands for some time and turned 18 in 2022 and are therefore subject to the civic integration requirement under the Civic Integration Act 2021. Among asylum migrants who had attended education in the Netherlands before beginning civic integration, 70 percent (1.2 thousand out of 1.7 thousand) had attended secondary education. Among family and other migrants, that share is only one third and this group is also more likely to have attended higher vocational education or university education than asylum migrants.

Education abroad
In the second half of 2022, 1.3 thousand persons who are subject to the civic integration requirement – of whom 1.2 thousand were asylum migrants and 0.1 were family and other migrants – had their diploma assessed. In more than three quarters of cases, the diploma was a Bachelor's degree or higher.

Pre-integration

Of the 13.3 thousand asylum migrants to whom Pre-integration was offered, 10.7 thousand (80 percent) agreed to take part. Pre-integration is a non-mandatory component of civic integration. A total of 7.1 thousand (37 percent) had actually gone on to participate in the language tuition in the Pre-integration component and a total of 1.5 thousand asylum migrants (8 percent) ultimately completed the language tuition.

Housing and distribution

Of the 19 thousand asylum migrants of the 2022 cohort, many were in COA accommodation for a time or for an extended period following the beginning of the civic integration requirement. At the end of 2022, 8.3 thousand asylum migrants in this group (44 percent) were still in COA accommodation. In the case of family and other migrants, they are always housed by a municipality at the beginning of the civic integration requirement.
  
At the end of 2022, half of asylum migrants from the 2022 cohort had moved between reception locations at least twice before they could be housed by a municipality.

One in six asylum migrants are placed with the same municipality in which they are being accommodated in a COA reception location. For asylum migrants who are placed in a different municipality to the one in which they are being accommodated, the distance between the two municipalities varies greatly. Around one third of asylum migrants were accommodated at a reception centre within 65 kilometres of the municipality in which they were placed, and for another third that distance was greater than 65 kilometres.

Asylum migrants generally live more spread across the Netherlands than family and other migrants. The smaller municipalities are more likely to accommodate a disproportionately high number of asylum migrants (when population is taken into account). Family and other migrants live mainly in the large cities in the west of the country.

Civic integration by municipalities

After the start of the civic integration requirement and when housing has been provided by the municipality, a general intake procedure is carried out to assess the start position and development opportunities of each person subject to the requirement. At the end of 2022, a total of 6.7 thousand of the 19 thousand asylum migrants had started the general intake (35 percent). For family and other migrants, 4.1 thousand out of 7.4 thousand (55 per cent) had started the general intake.

Based on the conclusions of the general intake combined with the results of a learning aptitude test, a learning pathway is determined. The details of this are recorded in the form of an official decision in a ‘personal integration and participation plan’ (PIP).

The B1 route is the learning pathway selected the most often, and this tendency is even clearer among family and other migrants than among asylum migrants. In nearly all cases where the ‘Z route’ is recommended, the learning aptitude test shows that language level B1 is not attainable. The result of the learning aptitude test is therefore often consistent with the learning pathway selected, but does not always seem to have determined the learning pathway recorded in the PIP.

For asylum migrants, the period between the start of the civic integration requirement and the general intake is more than three months in nearly half of cases. One of the reasons for this is that most asylum migrants are accommodated at a COA reception location for some time after the start of the civic integration requirement and municipalities do not usually start the general intake at that point. For family and other migrants, this period is longer than three months in a quarter of cases.

In 2022, in the case of around three-quarters of asylum seekers it took a maximum of ten weeks after the start of the general intake until the PIP was recorded by the municipality as an official decision. Over a quarter of asylum migrants had a PIP by the end of 2022, while for family and other migrants the share was half. For the entire group of 26.5 thousand migrants, 34 percent had a PIP by the end of 2022.

The municipality begins the civic integration process with a general intake within one month of the start of the civic integration requirement in the case of fewer asylum migrants (15 percent of 17.5 thousand asylum migrants) than family and other migrants (39 percent of 6.8 thousand family and other migrants), in relative terms. In 2022, among those who had been subject to the civic integration requirement for nine months, the share of family and other migrants who had completed the general intake and had a PIP in the ninth month was also higher than the share of asylum migrants in the same situation.

This report has not considered the civic integration process subsequent to the decision regarding the learning pathway, such as switching between pathways, dropping out, participation in PVT and MAP, exams passed and the fulfilment of the civic integration requirement. Nor has this report focused on how those subject to the civic integration requirement have fared in terms of the labour market and social security. Future reports on the Statistics on Integration Act (SWI) will include these points.