The Local Dimension of Migration Policymaking

Abstract

A m s t e r d a m U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s RePoRTs imiscoeThe Local Dimension of Migration Policymaking IMISCOE International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in EuropeThe IMISCOE Research Network unites researchers from, at present, 25 institutes specialising in studies of international migration, integration and social cohesion in Europe. What began in 2004 as a Network of Excellence sponsored by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission has become, as of April 2009, an independent self-funding endeavour. From the start, IMISCOE has promoted integrated, multidisciplinary and globally comparative research led by scholars from various branches of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law. The Network furthers existing studies and pioneers new scholarship on migration and migrant integration. Encouraging innovative lines of inquiry key to European policymaking and governance is also a priority.The IMISCOE-Amsterdam University Press Series makes the Network's findings and results available to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the media and other interested stakeholders. High-quality manuscripts authored by Network members and cooperating partners are evaluated by external peer reviews and the IMISCOE Editorial Committee. The Committee comprises the following members: All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book. ContentsIntroduction: the local dimension of migration policymaking 9 Maren Borkert and Tiziana Caponio 1 From the nation state to the city: the emergence of local integration as a European policy issue 9 2 The study of local integration policy in Europe:where are we and where we are going? 13 3 The content of the book 23 Whereas international migration primarily concerns the territorial sovereignty of nation states, being defined as persons crossing national borders, integration touches upon the social boundaries of nations. These geographic and social boundaries constitute the nation state as a collective agent. Immigrants moving into the nationalised territories and societies raise questions about the permeability of established boundaries. Thus, immigration and the integration of newcomers are a national concern in most member states of the EU and abroad. Lately, however, it has become increasingly accepted that the majority of immigrants, particularly in Europe, are living in cities and small towns in rural areas . Consequently, the awareness that migrant integration takes place at the local level has entered current political and scientific discourses on integration.1 In fact, the acceleration of international migration movements after World War II and increasingly since the mid-1980s, has pressured municipalities throughout Europe...

The social regulation of transnational migration: Perspectives from the Asia Pacific

“…Kneebone, 2010;Rother and Piper, 2015), the expanding literature on migration governance has so far mostly considered the global level (Grugel and Piper, 2007;Koser, 2010;Betts, 2011), focusing on the role of international organisations in generating knowledge on the global movement of people. Other studies have addressed the local level of policy response (Caponio and Borkert, 2010). Influenced by discourses on globalisation, many scholars have neglected the regional scope of transnational processes at the mesolevel, where there are additional institutional actors and processes.…”

Integration Policies of European Cities in Comparative Perspective: Structural Convergence and Substantial Differentiation

“…While traditionally integration research has focused on the national level, over the past decades growing attention has been given to the emerging role of cities. The "local turn of integration policies" (Caponio and Borkert, 2010) has been explained as a consequence of globalisation and the loss of importance of the nation-state (Penninx, 2008), as a result of decentralisation processes (Schmidtke, 2014) or simply because immigrants tend to settle in urban areas and therefore it is precisely there where the challenges are most pronounced (Penninx, 2009). Often in contrast to highly symbolic debates at the national level, local policies have been characterised by a rather "bottom-up place sensitive approach" and a "pragmatic logic of problemsolving" (Scholten and Penninx, 2016).…”