Opportunities and Challenges in EU Integration Policies: the Case of Iranian Women Migrants.

This thesis examines the opportunities and gaps that European Union integration policies and their national implementations in Germany and the Netherlands—create for Iranian migrant women. Treating integration as a multidimensional process rather than a single outcome, the study focuses on four interlocking arenas: language and education, labour-market entry and progression, social participation and belonging, and access to rights and public services. Methodologically, it combines a systematic review of EU and national policy documents with semi-structured interviews with Iranian women in Germany and the Netherlands, enabling a grounded, comparative analysis. The findings are expected to show that policy instruments such as language and integration courses, skills pathways, and local service provision can open meaningful routes to mobility when they are gender-sensitive, time-flexible, and coupled with practical supports (e.g., childcare and accelerated credential recognition). At the same time, test-driven requirements, fragmented local implementation, and perfectionist language standards often reproduce barriers in everyday life. By centring lived experience alongside formal policy, the study identifies where “ladders on paper” translate into real opportunities and where the policy–practice gap persists, thus offering concrete directions for strengthening gender-responsive integration in EU and national contexts.