Setting the Immigrant Policy Agenda: Expertise and Politics in the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Policy making and agenda setting often are analyzed either in terms of how policy problems are defined, or in terms of the structural setting producing stability or opportunities for change. Building on different fields of scholarly work, this paper aims at an integration of structural and substantive elements in studying agenda setting. We analyze how particular frames of immigrant issues emerge in the interaction between policy makers and experts within this immigrant policy domain. By comparing this key element of agenda setting in the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom, we show how different types of interaction produce different substantive policy frames. If immigrant integration is shaped primarily as a policy issue in broader political arenas and the media, a different frame emerges than when venues such as advisory bodies, think tanks and bureaucracies with limited access and less public exposure are involved.

The ‘epistemic turn’ in immigration policy analysis

“…This framework has been usefully applied to comparative analysis of the role of research in European national and EU-level integration policies (Scholten, 2011), notably in the context of the DIAMINT project (Scholten et al, forthcoming). Applying this comparative approach, Scholten and Timmermans (2010) find evidence of a shift from technocratic to enlightenment and then to engineering configurations, not just in Dutch integration policy, but also in French and UK approaches (albeit the shift occurred earlier). Echoing earlier insights of Penninx, they suggest that the technocratic model is more characteristic of the earlier 'framing' stage of integration policy development.…”

Integrating Immigrants in Europe

“…Partly as an effect of the second WRR report, awareness grew among policymakers that the minorities paradigm would not hold (see also Scholten and Timmermans 2010). Immigration continued and diversified, developing into a structural phenomenon following the fall of the Iron Curtain after 1989.…”

“…Besides substantiating policy decisions, research can also have a plainly legitimising function for policy actors and institutions. This legitimising function of research and expertise does not refer to substantive research findings themselves, but to the mere symbolic act of mobilising knowledge and expertise in order to claim authority over a particular policy domain or issue (see also Timmermans 2010). …”

“…Besides substantiating policy decisions, research can also have a plainly legitimising function for policy actors and institutions. This legitimising function of research and expertise does not refer to substantive research findings themselves, but to the mere symbolic act of mobilising knowledge and expertise in order to claim authority over a particular policy domain or issue (see also Timmermans 2010).Boswell's landmark work on knowledge utilisation in migration policymaking in the United Kingdom, Germany and the EU (Boswell 2009) alludes to various important contextual factors that may help explain why, where and when a specific type of knowledge utilisation emerges. For instance, her examination of the European Migration Network revealed that this organisation primarily served to substantiate EU migration policies in the context of the fierce politicisation of this issue at the European level.…”

Research-Policy Dialogues on Migrant Integration in Europe: A Conceptual Framework and Key Questions

“…Besides substantiating policy decisions, research can also have a plainly legitimising function for policy actors and institutions. This legitimising function of research and expertise does not refer to substantive research findings themselves, but to the mere symbolic act of mobilising knowledge and expertise in order to claim authority over a particular policy domain or issue (see also Caponio et al 2014 andTimmermans 2010). …”