Different kinds of policies have been developed and implemented in order to increase immigrants’ integration into their host societies. Large-scale empirical studies are being conducted in order to assess past and current policies, identify causes of their success (or, quite often, failure), and inform the development of new strategies for emerging contexts [1, 2]. Well-developed methods of quantitative social research are used in order to identify various economic, political, legal, and social factors that can affect the process of integration. At the same time, some important factors may be ignored or their significance underestimated, due to them being outside theoretical frameworks implemented both in the policies and in the studies that aim to explore those policies’ effectiveness [3, 4].
This paper discusses how comparative studies of the effectiveness of integration policies can be informed by philosophical and sociological theories of language, cultural identity, and the concept of mediation developed in an activity theory and applied in second language pedagogies. The discussion focuses on two issues: (1) second language classroom as a locus of immigrants’ socialisation into the new culture, and the need to approach second language pedagogies as a sociocultural practice of the formation of cultural identities [5]; and (2) the new information and communication technologies’ effects on integration processes [6, 7].

[1] DeVoretz, D & Werner, C 2000 ‘A theory of social forces and immigrant second language acquisition’, IZA DP No. 110, http://ftp.iza.org/dp110.pdf
[2] Esser, H 2000 Migration, language and integration, AKI Research Review 4, http://www2000.wzb.eu/alt/aki/files/aki_research_review_4.pdf.
[3] Krumm, H-J & Plutzar, V ‘Tailoring language provision and requirements to the needs and capacities of adult migrants’ http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/KrummPlutzarMigrants_EN.doc
[4] Barjesteh H & Vaseghi R 2012 ‘Acculturation model for L2 acquisition: review and evaluation’, Advances in Asian Social Sciences 2(4): 579-584.
[5]Van Compernolle, RA & Williams, L (2013) ‘Sociocultural theory and second language pedagogy’, in Language Teaching Research, 17(3): 277-281.
[6] Warschauer, M (2000) ‘Language, identity, and the Internet’, in B. Kolko, L. Nakamura & G. Rodman (eds), Race in Cyberspace, New York, Routledge, pp. 151-170.
[7] Elias N & Lemish D ‘Spinning the web of identity: the roles of the internet in the lives of immigrant adolescents’, New media & Society, 11(4): 533-551.