Why does the governance of migration and migration-related diversity so often derail? Why are migration and diversity policies so often declared a failure? Why are the issues of migration and diversity so contested, not only in terms of political contestation but also in terms of disagreements about very basic and fundamental questions such as who is a migrant, what is integration, and so on? Why do our policies and our institutions such as welfare states have so much difficulty with coming to terms with the emerging realities of migration and diversity? And how can we rethink migration and diversity governance in a way that does justice to the complex nature of these issues?
That migration and diversity governance often derail is manifested, amongst others, in the frequent crisis sensation in this governance area. There are few areas that are so often in âcrisis-modeâ as the areas of migration and diversity governance. For instance, Europe was quick to frame the refugee inflow in 2015 and later years as a ârefugee crisisâ, although it was never entirely clear what this crisis precisely meant, and importantly also, what triggered this crisis. The same applies to discourses on a âcrisis of integrationâ, a âcrisis of multiculturalismâ, or the âcrisisâ related to intra-EU mobility that played such an important role in Brexit.
This book searches for an answer to why the governance of migration and diversity so often derails, and what can be done to prevent this. It does so by examining the governance process rather than the policy output and outcomes per se. In particular, it explores the impact of the complexification of migration and diversity on governance.
In a broader perspective, the governance of migration and diversity are key examples of how contemporary societies are dealing with the increase of social complexity. Migration has become a structural reality in an increasing number of places, but often in very different and variable ways. This includes, but is not limited to, differences in types of migration, such as refugee migration, labour migration, family migration and many other forms of migration. It also includes differences in patterns of mobility of these migrants: some migrants stay, some return, some move on and some engage, for instance, in circular mobility patterns. Furthermore, as a consequence of migration, migration-related diversity has increased in many places across the world. However, diversity does not follow a âone-size-fits-allâ model. Whereas some countries or cities have only recently started to face migration or only serve as gateways for migrants, others have long-established migration histories with distinct migrant minorities or with so many minorities that one can even speak of superdiversity (Vertovec 2007b). In some cities, the population with a first or second generation migration background comprises more than half the total urban population.
A city like London illustrates how complex migration and diversity have become as governance challenges. More than half of the London population has a first or second generation migration background. But this âmigration backgroundâ reflects a broad diversity of different ethnic, cultural, social and economic backgrounds. Also, the cityâs population has become increasingly âfloatingâ, with a constant inflow of newcomers and an outflow of people moving on, moving back or settling elsewhere temporarily. Consequently, the city must play on many chessboards at the same time. On the one hand, it has to make sure that newcomers find jobs and have access to services and that discrimination is addressed, even though it is not even sure whether people will stay and there is an ongoing inflow of new migrants in need of assistance. On the other hand, it has to address sentiments amongst the broader population regarding the arrival of newcomers in order to prevent a popular backlash and to reproduce some form of social cohesion in the face of âsuperdiversityâ and an increasingly floating population. All this takes place within the broader social context of ongoing new arrivals, a political context marked by contestation and mediatisation and a broader international context in which treaties such as the Geneva Convention as well as various EU treaties (at least until Brexit) structure the inflow of specific migrants into the city.
Another illustration of how social complexity challenges governance is the issue of environmental refugees. Although various migration scholars consider that environmentally driven migration has already become the largest migration type on a global scale, the concept of âenvironmental refugeeâ is not recognized in any international treaty (Laczko 2010). As slow-onset as well as rapid-onset developments such as natural disasters continue to increase the number of environmental refugees, governments in destination areas are faced with the challenge of how to respond to this migration flow and the question of whether or not these migrants will stay. Is there a need for a policy aimed at incorporation, or should policy focus on temporary residence while maintaining a perspective on the area of origin? And what are the broader political implications of accepting environmental migrants? In fact, scholars argue that even the recent Syrian crisis that spurred large-scale migration to various neighbouring countries and to Europe, was fundamentally driven by factors of environmental degradation.
Yet another illustration of how social complexity tends to challenge conventional ways of thinking about governance and policymaking involves the contestation of discourses on migration and diversity. A much-used discourse in relation to migrant incorporation evolves around the concept of âintegrationâ. Not only has this concept been fiercely politically contested but it has also been criticized by scholars for being extremely difficult to define and measure. Some scholars argue that the term integration emerged primarily as a source of legitimation for government intervention with migrants (Favell 2003; Schinkel 2013, 2017). Similar issues have evolved around the discursive construction of who is a migrant and who is not, and also for how long someone should continue to be labelled as a migrant. For instance, can the children of migrants also be described as actual (second generation) migrants?
The central thesis of this book is that coming to terms with social complexity requires a governance approach that acknowledges and is better equipped to cope with complexity. This is based on a key observation in governance literature is that complex issues require complex responses (Jessop 1997; Klijn and Koppenjan 2014; Marco Verweij and Thompson 2006). There are no âquick fixesâ for complex problems such as climate change and gender mainstreaming. In fact, as will be argued in this book, it is the denial or failure to recognize complexity that contributes to the frequent âcrisis modeâ in migration and diversity governance. Coping with complexity requires reflexivity and structural accommodation to complexity within the mainstream, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution that can be designed, implemented and considered to have âsolvedâ the problem. Dealing with complex issues such as migration and diversity means that such issues should become part of almost everything we do, of how we think and of the structures and institutions we reproduce. This means making migration and diversity integral parts of todayâs complex governance systems, very similar to how gender and environmental concerns are integrated (âmainstreamedâ) into governance systems.
There can be many factors at play in governance processes that may defy complexity, and contribute to simplifications, reductions or denials of complexity rather than efforts to grasp and respond to it. In policy science literature this has been described as âdegenerative policy designsâ (Schneider and Ingram 1997) or âpolicy pathologiesâ (Dunlop 2017), likely to lead to policy fiascos (Hart 2017). Indeed, many studies of migration and diversity policymaking reveal this urge to come up with quick, clear and simple solutions; for instance, the strong belief that migration-related diversity can be âmanagedâ by state-led integration policies, or that migration can be âmanagedâ through restrictive migration policies or border control.
This book focuses on this dual nature of governance processes in complex policy areas, which involves a constant discrepancy between recognizing, understanding and responding to complexity on the one hand, and denying and simplifying complexity on the other. It takes migration and migration-related diversityâtwo highly complex issuesâas its central (revelatory) case studies. Rather than focusing on migration and diversity per se, or on the outcomes or effects of policies, it focuses specifically on the governance processes in these areas that underlie these policies. It will do so by systematically reviewing how complexity is dealt with in different dimensions of governance processes, distinguishing between the role of knowledge (rational perspective), institutions (institutional perspective), power (political perspective) and discourses (constructivist perspective). Focusing on these four dimensions of governance, a systematic connection will be made between migration literature on the one hand, and the literatures on policymaking and governance on the other. This also involves making connections with literature on the governance in other highly complex policy areas, such as gender and environment.
The dual nature of governance in the face of social complexity will be conceptualized as a tension between âmainstreamingâ and âalienationâ. Coping with social complexity requires an ongoing process of recalibration of mainstream policies and institutions (âmainstreamingâ ) in the face of often unforeseeable and uncontrollable dynamics of migration and diversity. It requires a constant rethinking of, for instance, how we organize welfare states, ideas about citizenship, access to public services, ideas about national identity, the organization of international trade: or, to put it briefly, of almost every imaginable fact of todayâs complex societies. A complex solution to complex issues thus means that key aspects of contemporary society will have to be constantly recalibrated or âupdatedâ in the face of new developments in migration and diversity.
However, there are many factors at play in the dynamics of migration and diversity governance that defy complexification and contribute to what I will conceptualize as âalienationâ. Examples of this include US President Trumpâs construction of a wall at the US-Mexican border and the EU-Turkey deal, intended to function as a âquick-fixâ to the European refu...