Research cluster C9 The multilevel governance of immigrant and immigration policies
In its first work package the cluster surveyed the state of the art in the field of migration policy-making. Its purpose is to review the literature on the multilevel governance of migration in European countries. It can be considered an attempt to provide a first review of a corpus of researches and studies now still quite limited in scope and quantity but doomed to grow in the next future. It was intended as an attempt to provide scholars interested in the subject of immigration and immigrant policy making with a first starting point for future research. The cluster attempted to review emerging literature on the multilevel governance of migration by focusing on the main levels of government at the centre of the surveyed studies. They furthermore deal with national policy-making, which is probably the most investigated level in all the surveyed countries, while they also devote attention to local policy-making, which appear to be a particularly relevant field especially in those countries with a decentralised state structure. Additionally, supra-national policy-making is taken into consideration. Research on the Europeanization of immigrant and immigration policy are still few and often privilege a topdown approach, focusing essentially on the impact of EU decisions on the national policy-making. However, this is a promising research field, given the communitarisation of immigration policy after the Amsterdam Treaty.
Within their inventory they focus is on:
* Main approaches regarding the making of national migratory policies and laws.
* The local level and implementation processes and policy-networks analyses
* The European and supra-national level
During the second work package cluster 9 intended to:
1. To conclude to bring to an end the work it has carried out in the previous package, by 1a) integrating the SoAR with missing information from Scandinavian countries and Switzerland; 1b) polishing and reducing the SoAR for publication as a chapter of an edited volume; 1c) integrating country reports with brief references to the evolution of migration and policy making; readjusting them in the light of the general framework of SoAR, polishing them for IMISCOE web site and possible future publication.
2. To include some new EU members and future member countries (in particular giving and transit countries) as guests or associated by looking for invited and/or associate members to C9 by 2a) the specific assistance of ICMPD; 2b) the help of feasibility project EUROLINKS. These members will be asked to prepare a country report more oriented to the analysis of the phenomenon than to the review of the literature.
3. To shift the focus of attention from the research and studies review to the analysis of migration decision making in itself with particular attention to 3a) the Europeanisation from below and to 3b) international and transnational dimensions (the role of the giving countries public authorities/ the role of transnational actors such as religious organizations, unions and the like).
4. To co-operate with other clusters and with the feasibility project to prepare innovative projects of research aimed at supporting the process of Europeanisation of immigration and integration policies.
During the third work package, cluster 9 intended to:
1) come to a first mapping of decision-making structures and processes in the main EU immigration countries, including at least some of the new Eastern Europe member states;
2) present a research programme on the side effects of nationality policies (in particular those adopting co-ethnic criteria) and amnesties of EU countries on other EU countries, to be carried out together with Clusters A1 (International migration and its regulation) and B3 (Legal status, citizenship and political integration);
3) promote the presentation of joint research programmes on the criteria of evaluation of immigrant and immigration policies together with other clusters, in particular with those that are more concerned with migratory policies, i.e. A1, B3, B4, B5, B6 and C7.
