It is not possible to find an overall measure of how good or bad immigrants' integration is in a country. At the same time, it may be good along some dimensions and poor along others, and integration will depend on who comes to the individual countries.
The largest immigrant groups at the beginning of 2024 came from Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Syria, Sweden, Somalia, Germany, and Syria. The largest number of Norwegian-born to immigrant parents had background from Pakistan, Poland, Somalia, Iraq, Vietnam, Eritrea, and Lithuania. Norwegian-born to immigrant parents has a large majority of younger people.
Some immigrants pursue education through the regular education system, while others qualify themselves through the introduction programme. Education, employment, and wage levels are closely related and vary by country background, reason for immigration and length of residence. Immigrants 25 years and older stand out with higher proportion both without education, with primary and lower secondary school education, and with higher education than in the rest of the population. Norwegian-born to immigrant parents 25 years and older have the highest proportion with higher education.The employment rate is lower among immigrants than in the rest of the population. Among those employed, a lower proportion have full-time jobs. Immigrants had a lower average monthly wage than the rest of the population.
Many immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents have lower income than the population without immigrant background. However, quite a few have experienced relatively strong income growth between 2015 and 2021, reducing the income gap between those with and without immigrant background. Income is very important for the opportunity to become a homeowner. Ownership shares increase with income for immigrants and their children, although the ownership shares will not be as high as among the rest of the population, not even in the highest income quartile. A relatively high proportion of immigrants were social welfare recipients in 2015-2022.
Immigrants, Norwegian-born to immigrant parents and foreign citizens have been part of the Norwegian elections for 40 years. Voter turnout is an important contribution to and can be used as an indicator of integration. Over time, however, as the number of immigrants has increased, voters with an immigrant background have not participated in the elections to the same extent as the rest of the population. This picture does not change even if background factors such as country background, immigration category, education, employment, and age are taken into account.
Immigrants are a diverse group with large differences by country background in self-assessed health, use of GP services and mortality. Many factors can explain the differences, such as living conditions and habits, genes, the age and gender composition of immigrants from each country, the reason why they came to Norway and how long they have lived here.
It is most common to receive measures from the Child Welfare Services among immigrants (5 per cent in 2022), while the proportions for Norwegian-born to immigrant parents and the rest of the population are 4 and 3 per cent respectively in the same period.
Integration is not just about participating in working life and education. It also has social and psychological aspects, which is covered by the chapter about everyday integration. The publication also includes an article summarizing some findings from a European comparison. The main findings in all the chapters are translated into English, which you can find in chapter 15.