ABSTRACT
Our empirical research on the political participation of immigrants and on local government policies towards them in 16 major European cities and Tel Aviv yielded a wealth of interesting material based on systematic descriptive comparisons (see the city templates available on the u n e s c o website [www.unesco.org/most] and the book by Rogers and Tillie [2001]). We have supplemented it in this volume with indepth comparisons on selected topics. We believe this material will significantly advance the state of the art in the field of integration and its related policy arenas. In view of the counterintuitive nature of some of our results - such as our insights into the relationship between ethnic civic community and political participation, or the unexpected and implicit forms of migrant political participation we observed in contexts that do not openly allow for such participation - our findings may chal lenge mainstream ideas. Through them, we hope to contribute meaningful new concepts and methods to the scientific domain and to provide important lessons for policymaking.
