Over the last two decades both immigration politics and research on immigration issues have become very important. So far; there is however no dataset that would allow researchers to systematically investigate immigration policies across a large sample of countries. The aim of the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) project is therefore to provide a set of sophisticated quantitative indices to measure immigration policies in all OECD countries and for the time period 1980-2010. By means of this new dataset the causes and effects of immigration policies will be studied more systematically.

The Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) project is led by Marc Helbling and was funded by the Emmy-Noether program of the German Research Foundation for the period 2011-2016.

Please cite the following overview paper when you use the IMPIC data:

Marc Helbling; Liv Bjerre; Friederike Römer and Malisa Zobel (2017):

“Measuring Immigration Policies: The IMPIC Database”; European Political Science 16(1): 79-98. Link.

For technical and methodolocial details of the IMPIC dataset see the following two Discussion Papers:

Schmid; Samuel D. and Marc Helbling (2016). Validating the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) Dataset. WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Discussion Paper. SP VI 2016–202. Link.

Bjerre; Liv; Marc Helbling; Friederike Römer and Malisa Zobel (2016). Technical Report: The Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) Dataset. WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Discussion Paper. SP VI 2016–201. Link.