A new study, released Tuesday and conducted by the German Bertelsmann Stiftung, dispels the popular belief that immigration is intrinsically harmful to social cohesion and finds that the share of immigrants in a country's population actually shows no statistically significant effect on social cohesion.
The Social Cohesion Radar includes 27 EU member states (without Croatia that joined on 1 July) and seven OECD countries: Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the US.
The study defines social cohesion as the special quality how members of a community live and work together. Generally speaking, a cohesive society is characterized by resilient social relationships, a positive emotional connectedness between its members and the community and a pronounced focus on the common good.
According to the Social Cohesion Radar, the Nordic countries, English-speaking and Alpine countries have the highest levels of social cohesion. In particular, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland top the ranking, closely followed by Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand.
The research shows that most of the countries in the Western part of Europe—Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain—feature above-average to average social cohesion.
On the contrary, the Baltic States (in particular Lithuania and Latvia) and the southeast European countries like Bulgaria, Greece and Romania suffer from low social cohesion.
Social Cohesion Radar, developed in collaboration with the Jacobs University Bremen, also finds that immigration and diversity are not detrimental to social cohesion. On the contrary, the study shows that a positive correlation exists: the higher the percentage of immigrants, the higher the level of social cohesion.
Even though the experts conclude that immigration is not intrinsically harmful to social cohesion, they say that it is conceivable that heterogeneity has stronger effects on a smaller scale, for example at the regional or local level.
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