Beyond One’s Willingness to Integrate: Investigating the Impact of Perceived Justice and InstitutionalLegitimacy on the Social Integration of Asylum Migrants within the Dutch Asylum System

This master's thesis explored the relationship between perceived justice, institutional legitimacy, and social integration among asylum seekers in the Netherlands via quantitative research. Data is derived from a previous study for the ‘Legasy project’, which assessed compliance with return decisions. For this study, however, this concept has been exchanged for the social integration component to discover any connections with perceived justice, institutional legitimacy, and one’s asylum status application. Through statistical testing, it has been found that not four dimensions as mentioned by Esser cover the term social integration (culturation, positioning, interaction, and identification), but two. These are, within this study, referred to as integration activities and integration attitudes. The dimensions served as a foundation to understand migrants’ integration process. Findings revealed accepted asylum seekers score higher on integration activities if they believe in restricting individuals’ freedom to live wherever they prefer. Contrary to this, they also believe the Netherlands does not do enough to help asylum seekers. While the study's findings are limited to significant results, it highlights the partial influence of factors such as distributive justice and approved application status on migrants’ social integration trajectory within Dutch society.