The Diffusion of Migration Control Practice. Actors, Processes and Effects.

Project Information

DoMiCoP

Grant agreement ID: 895716

DOI

10.3030/895716

Project terminated on 31 August 2023

EC signature date 23 April 2020

Start date 1 March 2021

End date 29 October 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 163 673,28

EU contribution

€ 163 673,28

Coordinated by

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DoMiCoP (The Diffusion of Migration Control Practice. Actors, Processes and Effects.)

Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2023-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In an age of global integration, the capacity of states to control migration remains a key concern for the population of several European Member States. The loss-of-control theme provides a powerful narrative that pervades the media, political arenas and the society. The idea of re-establishing control has been underlying many recent political events and debates, within the European Union (EU) and beyond. Like climate change, migration is a global issue that is addressed both locally and internationally, therefore triggering cross-national learning and policy diffusion that DoMiCoP studies by reversing the focus from classical policy design and discourses to the understudied policy implementation. That is a distinct stage of the policy-making process in which policies take on practical meaning. Goals and results emerge. The implementation shapes outcomes more than the design. Other mainstream narratives tend to blame the work of the implementers in case of policy failure. That series of representations overlook the complex dynamics that characterize the implementation and the complex relation between policy on paper and policy in practice. When politicians seek to avoid thorny political issues, ambiguous policy is produced. In doing so, politicians effectively ‘pass the buck’ to the implementation stage. Organizations that put policies into practice find themselves in the position of deciding on matters that were not solved or were impossible to solve at the level of policy design. As a result, much policy-making is left in the remit of implementers most notably in the domain of migration control in the European Union.
DoMiCoP puts the implementation of migration and border control first. It asks one main question: how and why do communities of practice develop and diffuse the knowledge required to put migration control into action? DoMiCoP considers communities of practices to be social venues for the interaction of different kinds of actors involved in the operational side of migration control. These understudied venues matter because practical knowledge about how to implement policies as well as understandings about the issues at stake in implementing those policies are developed and shared.
DoMiCoP overall objectives are threefold:
1) Identifying venues at intermediate levels in which communities of practice take shape.
2) Analysing the communities of practice by focusing on the configurations of actors and organizations involved, the motivations underlying their involvement, the process of knowledge development in interaction, the conflicts and negotiations.
3) Revealing the role of non-state organizations (private for profit and not-for-profit).
By taking the perspective of actors and organizations that implement migration control in several areas (such as asylum, returns and border management), DoMiCoP has revealed the relevance of the interactions with other public and private implementers and the informality characterizing those processes.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed from the beginning of the project has covered multiple facets of the fellow’s career development. The work performed can be summarized according to the following categories:

- Theoretical training: The theoretical training has allowed including concepts and theories of global and EU governance in connection to the practice of governance within and beyond the state.
- Empirical Research: the fellow has conducted an analysis of migration governance in practice based on rare empirical and comparative research across Europe.
- Teaching: the fellow has designed and practiced innovative teaching methodologies by contributing to EUI/MPC teaching programmes.
- Dissemination and communication for different audiences: the fellow has published high-level publications in top-tier journals. She has presented project results in specialised research centres across the world and in international conferences. She has engaged with journals and TVs at a global level.
- Fund-raising: The fellow has drafted a series of new research grant proposals. She applied for the ERC starting grant – although the application was not awarded, it ranked very high. She drafted a research proposal that allowed the Fellow to obtain funding connected to her Chair in Migration.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DoMiCoP has moved the existing state-of-the-art in a new direction through a focus on the practice of governance that, although its relevance, is underdeveloped. Very little is known about the actors and the processes of the diffusion of migration control practice. DoMiCoP engages with approaches to research and associated literatures that are not typically applied to the study of international migration such as implementation studies, organizational studies, and comparative policy studies. In the European context, scholars have documented the effects on policy-making of the expert knowledge produced by epistemic communities most notably think tanks and academics. Unlike the nexus between expert knowledge, epistemic communities and policy formulation, the nexus between everyday knowledge, communities of practice and policy implementation has not yet received systematic scholarly attention.
Such an analytical stance has put forward the multiplicity of actors and organizations involved in the implementation of migration control policies, including private companies, as well as the processes that account for the diffusion of policy practice. Personal contacts, informal interactions, and informal exchange affect change in the delivery of public policies. Private companies participate in decision-making processes and engage in solution-driven processes of change. Organizational responses to migration travel across national contexts and, thus, contribute to transnational dynamics of change.
DoMiCoP has shown dynamics at the implementation stage which shape public responses from the bottom-up. It has included implementing organizations in comparative policy analyses interested in diffusion, transfer and transnational dynamics of policy change. It has focused on overlooked actors and processes of public policy making most notably private companies and the informal, organizational social processes of learning and knowing. To focus on uncodified processes of private actors’ participation in the decision-making of public organizations, DoMiCoP has brought the insights of organizational studies and organizational theories in the analysis of migration governance. The analy- sis has shown the informality of policy processes.

The impacts of this analysis are wide-ranging. Socio-economic impacts include informed and empirically grounded policy evaluations, both in terms of efficacy and efficiency of migration control policies. The implementation is the most relevant stage of the policy process to assess states’ capacity to control migration and borders. Yet, the perspective of implementing organizations tend to be overlooked. Research results that put forward the relevance of informality in policy processes have wider societal implications mainly related to the transparency of decision-making processes in public administrations. These results point to the societal needs for public scrutiny at all stages of policymaking processes.