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.
