This article offers an overview of scholarship on social investment policies in relation to the integration of immigrants and the role they can play in multicultural societies. At first sight, social investment is a promising strategy to deal with the inequalities in human capital and life chances that plague multicultural societies. However, on the basis of the available knowledge, the article shows that the benefit of social investment interventions for immigrants may be lower than expected for two main reasons. First, there are access biases in most typical social investment policies (for example, childcare, active labour market policies, training) that tend to limit participation by non-natives. Second, employers’ recruitment preferences and labour market discrimination are also likely to limit the potential of social investment interventions for immigrants. I conclude that to exploit the full potential of social investment policies in the promotion of immigrant integration, these policies need to be adapted, particularly by taking into account the essential role played by employers.

本文概述了有关移民融合的社会投资政策及其在多元文化社会中可以发挥的作用的学术研究。乍一看，社会投资是一种有希望的战略，可以解决困扰多元文化社会的人力资本和生活机会的不平等问题。但是，根据现有知识，该文章表明，针对移民的社会投资干预措施的收益可能低于预期，原因有两个。首先，在大多数典型的社会投资政策（例如育儿，积极的劳动力市场政策，培训）中存在准入偏见，这些偏见往往会限制非本地人的参与。第二，雇主的招聘偏好和劳动力市场歧视也可能会限制移民进行社会投资干预的潜力。我的结论是，要充分利用社会投资政策在促进移民融合中的潜力，必须对这些政策进行调整，特别是要考虑到雇主所发挥的重要作用。