Trajectories of Economic Integration of Amnestied Immigrants in Rotterdam

Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with immigrants who were legalised through a one-off collective amnesty issued by the Dutch government in 2007, this article proposes a tentative typology of three types of immigrants in terms of their economic integration (self-sufficient, dependent, and isolated) and the trajectories that led to these differences. An analysis of immigrants’ characteristics and experiences before and after legalisation suggests that these are closely related. The three trajectories consist of different interactions between immigrants’ access to and mobilisation of cultural, economic and social capital, their psychological and psychosomatic problems, and their attribution styles. Our findings show how interactions between these factors reinforced economic integration (in case of self-sufficient immigrants), undermined it (in case of isolated immigrants), or resulted in mixed outcomes (in case of dependent immigrants). As such, this study contributes to our understanding of how different factors previously found to be associated with the economic integration of amnestied immigrants relate to each other.