Why do politicians and civil servants commission research and what use do they make of it in policymaking? The received wisdom is that research contributes to improving government policy. Christina ...Boswell challenges this view, arguing that policymakers are just as likely to value expert knowledge for two alternative reasons: as a way of lending authority to their preferences; or to signal their capacity to make sound decisions. Boswell develops a compelling new theory of the role of knowledge in policy, showing how policymakers use research to establish authority in contentious and risky areas of policy. She illustrates her argument with an analysis of European immigration policies, charting the ways in which expertise becomes a resource for lending credibility to controversial claims, underpinning high-risk decisions or bolstering the credibility of government agencies.
Delegating Responsibility explores the politics of migration in the European Union and explains how the EU responded to the 2015–17 refugee crisis. Based on 86 interviews and fieldwork in Greece and ...Italy, Nicholas R. Micinski proposes a new theory of international cooperation on international migration. States approach migration policies in many ways—such as coordination, collaboration, subcontracting, and unilateralism—but which policy they choose is based on capacity and on credible partners on the ground. Micinski traces the fifty-year evolution of EU migration management, like border security and asylum policies, and shows how EU officials used “crises” as political leverage to further Europeanize migration governance. In two in-depth case studies, he explains how Italy and Greece responded to the most recent refugee crisis. He concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations regarding contemporary as well as long-term aspirations for migration management in the EU.
Les migrations transsahariennes sont replacées dans le cadre des contextes de la mobilité historique, des évolutions des politiques internationales d’accueil des migrants et de la réactivation des ...routes transsahariennes. Les fondements des dynamiques migratoires sont d’abord explorés à travers l’ancienneté des courants migratoires puis au travers de leurs soubassements sociaux. L’évolution des migrations nous amène ensuite à replacer le volume des migrations africaines dans le contexte international et à analyser les politiques. La variété et les réorientations des itinéraires migratoires rendent complexes les suivis des migrations. En Afrique comme en Europe, les espaces d’accueil des migrants sont de plus en plus difficiles d’accès. La mise en place de politiques plus restrictives va à l’encontre de la fluidité traditionnelle, oblige à de nouvelles stratégies et renforce les courants de migrations illégales. Le Nord du Mali, espace de grande pauvreté, est à la fois un pôle d’émigration et un espace de transit incontournable. Les conditions de traversée du désert sont épouvantables. Les villes sahéliennes de Gao et de Tombouctou sont des portes migratoires mais l’ambition est d’en faire des nœuds de structuration de l’espace. Elles sont à la fois des points de transit et dotées d’une histoire urbaine prestigieuse qui pourrait leur redonner des avantages décisifs, dans le cadre d’un développement local bien pensé.
Mexico and the United States exist in a symbiotic relationship: Mexico frequently provides the United States with cheap labor, illegal goods, and, for criminal offenders, a refuge from the law. In ...turn, the U.S. offers Mexican laborers the American dream: the possibility of a better livelihood through hard work. To supply each other's demands, Americans and Mexicans have to cross their shared border from both sides. Despite this relationship, U.S. immigration reform debates tend to be security-focused and center on the idea of menacing Mexicans heading north to steal abundant American resources. Further, Congress tends to approach reform unilaterally, without engaging with Mexico or other feeder countries, and, disturbingly, without acknowledging problematic southern crossings that Americans routinely make into Mexico. In Run for the Border, Steven W. Bender offers a framework for a more comprehensive border policy through a historical analysis of border crossings, both Mexico to U.S. and U.S. to Mexico. In contrast to recent reform proposals, this book urges reform as the product of negotiation and implementation by cross-border accord; reform that honors the shared economic and cultural legacy of the U.S. and Mexico. Covering everything from the history of Anglo crossings into Mexico to escape law authorities, to vice tourism and retirement in Mexico, to today's focus on Mexican border-crossing immigrants and drug traffickers, Bender takes lessons from the past 150 years to argue for more explicit and compassionate cross-border cooperation. Steeped in several disciplines, Run for the Border is a blend of historical, cultural, and legal perspectives, as well as those from literature and cinema, that reflect Bender's cultural background and legal expertise.
In this comparative study of the contemporary politics of deportation in Germany and the United States, Antje Ellermann analyzes the capacity of the liberal democratic state to control individuals ...within its borders. The book grapples with the question of why, in the 1990s, Germany responded to vociferous public demands for stricter immigration control by passing and implementing far-reaching policy reforms, while the United States failed to effectively respond to a comparable public mandate. Drawing on extensive field interviews, Ellermann finds that these crossnational differences reflect institutionally determined variations in socially coercive state capacity. By tracing the politics of deportation across the evolution of the policy cycle, beginning with anti-immigrant populist backlash and ending in the expulsion of migrants by deportation bureaucrats, Ellermann is also able to show that the conditions underlying state capacity systematically vary across policy stages.
This open access book provides an analysis of the functioning, consequences and inherent limitations of internalised immigration control. By adopting the perspective of irregular residents as well as ...local service providers, the book sheds new light on the intricate mechanisms that either help or hinder the diffusion of immigration control into concrete institutional settings, like schools or hospitals. A simple and innovative analytical framework enables the systematic comparison of three different spheres of service provision across two distinct local as well as also national contexts. This is necessary to understand the complex interplay between formal law and policy, the intrinsic rules and logics operating within institutions, and the ethical or practical obligations and constraints attached to particular roles and professions. Based on empirical findings and rigorous analysis, the book argues that internalised control is part of the problem that irregular migration poses for society, rather than constituting a potential solution to it.
What difference does law make in immigration policymaking? Since the 1970s, networks of progressive attorneys in both the US and France have attempted to use litigation to assert rights for ...non-citizens. Yet judicial engagement - while numerically voluminous - remains doctrinally curtailed. This study offers new insights into the constitutive role of law in immigration policymaking by focusing on the legal frames, narratives, and performances forged through action in court. Challenging the conventional wisdom that 'cause litigation' has little long-term impact on policymaking unless it produces broad rights-protective principles, this book shows that legal contestation can have important radiating effects on policy by reshaping how political actors approach immigration issues. Based on extensive fieldwork in the United States and France, this book explores the paths by which litigation has effected policy change in two paradigmatically different national contexts.
Lurid headlines on every aspect of migration have been a consistent feature of the last decade, from worries over asylum seekers to concerns about unprecedented economic immigration from Eastern ...Europe.
This book presents the first comprehensive account of government policy on immigration over the last ten years, providing an in-depth analysis of policy and legislation since Tony Blair and New Labour were first elected. The account begins by placing policy change under Labour in their proper historical context, before examining the key policy themes - economic migration; security; integration; asylum; delivery - of the last decade.
Through an analysis of such policy themes, the author contends that immigration policy has undergone an intense and innovative transformation in the period from May 1997 to May 2007. Arguing that a more plural system of governance exists, the author challenges traditional accounts of policy development. By addressing the various influences on immigration policymaking, from globalisation, the European Union and the law, to politics, the media and the networks of special interests, he seeks to provide a holistic explanation for the transformation of immigration policy. The author concludes with an evaluation of Labour's immigration reforms, and whether government policy can be judged a success.
The book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, students studying immigration, and readers interested in serious current affairs.
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