Governance and Public Administration

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in any decision-making procedure, but while a substantial body of work on the governance of international migration focuses on challenges posed to governance systems, we know remarkably little about the impact of risk and uncertainty on: (i) the cognitive biases of actors within migration governance systems; (ii) the susceptibility of these biases to change; (iii) the relationship between cognitive bias and broader questions of systemic resilience, vulnerability and adaptation and (iv) the similarities and differences in migration governance between major world regions. Each of these is a significant gap in our knowledge of international migration governance. To address this gap this project will focus on the context of decision to ask: what are the causes and consequences of the cognitive biases concerning risk and uncertainty held by actors in migration governance systems? The project will: (i) test the causes and consequences of the ‘frames’ held by actors in migration governance systems, specify the scope for these frames to change and to analyse the likely systemic effects of change on migration governance systems in four major world regions. (ii) develop a comparative regional analysis of the micro-political foundations of migration governance and their implications for system adaptation and change. (iii) significantly advance conceptual and methodological understanding of international migration governance through the use of concepts of systemic adaptation, vulnerability and resilience that bridge behavioural theories of choice with theories of institutional and organisational change. (iv) disseminate the results effectively through a range of appropriate outlets and through engagement with a range of users of the results of this work in academia, policy-making communities, NGOs and the wider public.

The study focus on the role of the civil servants in the implementation process of social policies. The projects purpose is to study Swedish integration and labour market policies. Issues of how race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class are done in the meeting between civil servants and their clients are often absent in research on public administration. The study focuses on, from a race/ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality perspective, how labour market establishment of newly arrived Swedes are made. Empirically, the material will be gathered at institutions that are responsible for the integration of newly arrived immigrants, i.e. employment offices. The project has an intersectional approach and is theoretically framed within gender studies and ethnicity studies. The study also takes it theoretical point of departure in welfare state research and public administration studies. The methods used are participant observation, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis.

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in any decision-making procedure, but while a substantial body of work on the governance of international migration focuses on challenges posed to governance systems, we know remarkably little about the impact of risk and uncertainty on: (i) the cognitive biases of actors within migration governance systems; (ii) the susceptibility of these biases to change; (iii) the relationship between cognitive bias and broader questions of systemic resilience, vulnerability and adaptation and (iv) the similarities and differences in migration governance between major world regions. Each of these is a significant gap in our knowledge of international migration governance. To address this gap this project will focus on the context of decision to ask: what are the causes and consequences of the cognitive biases concerning risk and uncertainty held by actors in migration governance systems? The project will: (i) test the causes and consequences of the ‘frames’ held by actors in migration governance systems, specify the scope for these frames to change and to analyse the likely systemic effects of change on migration governance systems in four major world regions. (ii) develop a comparative regional analysis of the micro-political foundations of migration governance and their implications for system adaptation and change. (iii) significantly advance conceptual and methodological understanding of international migration governance through the use of concepts of systemic adaptation, vulnerability and resilience that bridge behavioural theories of choice with theories of institutional and organisational change. (iv) disseminate the results effectively through a range of appropriate outlets and through engagement with a range of users of the results of this work in academia, policy-making communities, NGOs and the wider public.

In 2015, IOM developed a Migration Governance Framework (MiGOF) to help define what “well-managed migration policy” might look like at the national level. The MiGOF was welcomed by IOM’s Member States the same year. The Migration Governance Indicators (MGI) were developed to assess national frameworks, and help to operationalize the MiGOF. The MGI is a tool based on policy inputs, which offers insights on policy levers that countries can use to develop their migration governance. The MGI is not meant to rank countries on the design or implementation of migration policies, but rather to be a framework to help countries in the assessment of the comprehensiveness of their migration policies, as well as to identify gaps and areas that could be strengthened. The MGI aims to advance conversations on migration governance by clarifying what “well-governed migration” might look like in the context of SDG Target 10.7. Data collection is based on 90+ indicators grounded in the six dimensions of the Migration Governance Framework (i.e., migrant rights, whole of government approach, well-being of migrants, partnerships, mobility dimension of crises, and safe, orderly and regular migration). Each indicator refers to absence, partial or complete presence of a policy or framework. Since 2015, 50 countries have been assessed based on this indicators. A draft Migration Governance Snapshot based on the findings on analysis is then shared with the government counterparts. Countries can use the MGI as a point of departure towards clarifying what “good governance” entails in the context of migration. Additionally, the MGI—once expanded—can serve as a source of a variety of information regarding “best practices” providing countries with institutional design and policy ideas. Initially, countries can use the MGI to develop a holistic understanding of their migration governance structure and identify significant gaps or areas that need to be strengthened. Finally, the MGI methodology can be used by countries when reporting at the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on their national efforts to achieve the SDGs.

The MIGGOV seeks to break new ground in the analysis of international organizations (IOs) as key objects of study in the broader research field of international migration governance and of international governance more generally. The key questions are: to what extent, how and why do IOs impact upon and shape international migration governance in the absence of a global migration regime. In order to address these questions the project shifts the focus from international governance as a (changing) structure to international governors as sources of agency and to the outcomes that flow from interactions between various agents. As most international migration governance takes place under conditions of uncertainty about future migration scenarios, this project will specifically explore the issues of the production and the use of expert knowledge by IOs striving to impact upon international migration governance. The project will study the involvement of eight IOs in migration governance in Central Asia, which has been selected for analysis because it has so far escaped the attention of scholars despite evidence of multi-layered migration governance in the region. The project will specifically look at four Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan that share many similar features, but also exhibit some distinct political and socio-economic differences that make them highly relevant objects of study. The focus on Central Asia is also justified by the strategic importance that many international actors, including the EU, ascribe to the region. In addition to the Central Asian regional case study and intra-regional comparisons, the MIGGOV will produce overarching comparisons with the EU’s ‘Eastern Neighbourhood’. The project addresses topics on which the EU has called for further research in its 2013 Work Programme, namely those within activities 8.3 ‘Major trends in society and their implications’ and 8.4 ‘Europe in the World’.

ADMIGOV takes seriously the principles laid out in the New York Declaration (NYD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to study how alternative approaches to migration governance can be better designed and put into practice. Rather than proposing a top-down study of existing migration policies, ADMIGOV studies the reality of existing policies and practices on the ground to improve migration governance taking into consideration the principles of the NYD and SDGs. ADMIGOV holds an innovative and broad research design covering the whole migration ‘chain’, from entry through to exit and incorporating key issues such as labour migration, protection needs and development goals. The project includes the study of salient case-study in migration governance, including the Greek islands, Lebanon, and Turkey, to better understand the most important and most problematic processes at play. The project counts on the data of the Danish Refugee Council one of the largest datasets in the world, and aims at generating new indicators of good migration governance, helping the EU put the NYD and SDGs into practice.

In our part of the project (Work package 6) will investigate the responses given to migration at different scales. It aims to provide an in-depth understanding of responses provided by actors ranging from urban to rural contexts, from transnational city-city collaborations to local community initiatives. Local scale is one of the first spaces where migration needs to be governed. Cities different than governments include networks of public and private sector leaders and institutions that include citizen initiatives, trade unions, private companies and universities, among others. A multi-scalar approach will be implemented by examining three different types of cases (1) The case of urban-rural development in Sweden, via international migration, (2) The case of local migration ecosystems in Northern Italy, (3) The case of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, (4) The case of transnational collaborations and social innovations. By engaging in multi-scalar case studies, the aim is to cover both official and unofficial responses to the so called “refugee crisis”, emphasizing the role of the local authorities in facilitating (or hindering) the application of national policies on reception, redistribution and inclusion/exclusion of newcomers as well as the increasing role of communities and innovations in shaping the migration response by also showing opportunities. These areas, with the potential benefits of interdisciplinary research, will seek synergies between the following two goals; SDG Goal 9 on building resilient infrastructure as well as Goal 11 on inclusive cities. By doing so, we will inform policy making in these areas and potentially contribute to the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

On the basis of migration governance and legal pluralism theories, as well as on the basis of the developments in migration policies, the proposed research hypothesizes that the growing role of regional economic groups is likely to impact international migratory flows, bringing about, at the national level, a shift from migration control to migration management. A second hypothesis is that beyond trade and economic integration, regional initiatives have the potential to fulfil relevant functions, including the development of an appropriate normative framework for facilitating a human-rights-based approach to labour mobility. Third, the research proposes that as a consequence of this shift, the human rights protection available at the regional level can become much more effective. The research will develop an alternative human rights approach, based on the presumption that the regional migration approach may innovates in the exercise of sovereignty and human rights law. In order to achieve this, the proposed research will: - Contribute to migration governance by making regional processes, law and institutional developments a strong rationale for migration; - Develop an in-depth, country-level programme of research in two countries (Argentina and Thailand), in two regional integration projects (MERCOSUR in Latin America and ASEAN in Asia ); - Test the three hypotheses, relating to (1) the existing and emerging regional integration processes; (2) human rights effects of regionalism; (3) the interaction between regional integration processes and the formulation of migration and free movement provisions. The findings will contribute to multi-layered migration governance on the role of regional integration projects as venues for migration governance; to theories on how human rights law can respond to new forms of human mobility; and to the analysis of the diffusion of migration law in regional integration regimes – one of the most pressing issues of our time.

On the basis of migration governance and legal pluralism theories, as well as on the basis of the developments in migration policies, the proposed research hypothesizes that the growing role of regional economic groups is likely to impact international migratory flows, bringing about, at the national level, a shift from migration control to migration management. A second hypothesis is that beyond trade and economic integration, regional initiatives have the potential to fulfil relevant functions, including the development of an appropriate normative framework for facilitating a human-rights-based approach to labour mobility. Third, the research proposes that as a consequence of this shift, the human rights protection available at the regional level can become much more effective. The research will develop an alternative human rights approach, based on the presumption that the regional migration approach may innovates in the exercise of sovereignty and human rights law. In order to achieve this, the proposed research will: - Contribute to migration governance by making regional processes, law and institutional developments a strong rationale for migration; -Develop an in-depth, country-level programme of research in two countries (Argentina and Thailand), in two regional integration projects (MERCOSUR in Latin America and ASEAN in Asia ); - Test the three hypotheses, relating to (1) the existing and emerging regional integration processes; (2) human rights effects of regionalism; (3) the interaction between regional integration processes and the formulation of migration and free movement provisions. The findings will contribute to multi-layered migration governance on the role of regional integration projects as venues for migration governance; to theories on how human rights law can respond to new forms of human mobility; and to the analysis of the diffusion of migration law in regional integration regimes – one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Cybersecurity is one of today's most challenging security problems for commercial companies, NGOs, governmental institutions as well as individuals. Reaching beyond the technology focused boundaries of classical information technology (IT) security, cybersecurity includes organizational and behavioural aspects of IT systems and also needs to comply to the currently actively developing legal and regulatory framework for cybersecurity. For example, the European Union recently passed the Network and Information Security (NIS) directive that obliges member states to get in line with the EU strategy. While large corporations might have the resources to follow those developments and bring their IT infrastructure and services in line with the requirements, the burden for smaller organizations like local public administration will be substantial and the required resources might not be available. New and innovative solutions that will help local public administration to ease the burden of being in line with cybersecurity requirements are needed. For example, cooperation and coordination is one of the major aspects of the NIS and EU cybersecurity strategy. An enabling technology for cooperation and coordination is cyber situational awareness and information sharing of cyber incidents. In this project we propose a cybersecurity situational awareness solution for local public administrations that, based on an analysis of the context provides automatic incident detection and visualization, and enables information exchange with relevant national and EU level NIS authorities like CERTs. Advanced features like system self-healing based on the situational awareness technologies, and multi-lingual semantics support to account for language barriers in the EU context, are part of the solution.

The project breaks new ground in the study of migration governance by looking at the so-called immigration countries from the perspective of emigration governance. The main underlying theme of this research is that emigration and immigration are two sides of the same coin and thus European migration governance should be approached from two angles to understand its full dimension. European Union is in fact still a region of emigration, with majority of flows staying within its boundaries, but important numbers leaving EU every year. Following the current global trends emigrants should be perceived as a potential asset. ÉMIGRÉ analyses emigration and diaspora policies of four EU Member States (UK, France, Spain and Poland) as well as EU-level responses to emigration to understand what are the drivers of the emigration governance in Europe and how the policies actually work. Key objectives are: 1) To close the knowledge gap on migration from the EU. 2) To enrich international migration governance studies by providing comparative analysis of actions of EU States in regards to emigration management, over time. 3) To ask what is the relation between State identity formation/shifts and success of policy learning/policy transfer processes between levels of governance. 4) To contribute to evidence-based policy making at the EU level. The project focuses especially on EU emigration to other OECD countries and in particular Canada. It employs a wide range of interdisciplinary methods to collect and analyse data. It also offers an intensive training programme.

"Im Februar 2019 versammelten sich die afrikanischen Führungsspitzen in Addis Abeba, Äthiopien, für den 32. AU Gipfel bei dem verkündet wurde, das Jahr den „Geflüchteten, Zurückkehrenden und Binnenvertriebenen“ auf dem Kontinent zu widmen. Politische Entscheidungen müssen jedoch von den individuellen Mitgliedstaaten umgesetzt werden und die politischen Dimensionen wie (und mit wem) einzelne afrikanische Staaten Migration in ihren eigenen Kontexten bewältigen ist weitgehend immer noch unterforscht, trotz der politischen Aufmerksamkeit die (afrikanische) Migration in jüngster Zeit bekommt. Dieses Projekt strebt an, empirisch auf diese Forschungslücke zu reagieren und die politischen Interessen und gesellschaftlichen Diskurse zu beleuchten, die mit Migrationsgovernance in (und zwischen) vier Fällen in Sub-Sahara Afrika verbunden sind, namentlich Süd Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe und Südafrika. Diese Variation erlaubt einen Vergleich von Gast- und Entsendeländern, unterschiedlichen Konfliktarten sowie regionalen Unterschieden. Menschen sind auf unterschiedliche Arten und Weisen in Bewegung und nur durch die Betrachtung wie insgesamt mit Geflüchteten und anderen Migrant*innen umgegangen wird, können wir nachvollziehen, wie verschiedenen Formen von Migration womöglich politisch instrumentalisiert oder gegeneinander ausgespielt werden. Aus diesem Grund versteht dieses Projekt Vertreibung als nur eine Form von Migration (neben z.B. reguläre und irreguläre Auswanderung und Einwanderung). Theoretisch wird das Forschungsprojekt anstreben Migrations- und Konfliktforschung zu verbinden. Insbesondere Debatten über Friedensförderung erweitern unser Verständnis der politischen Dimension von Migration aus mehreren Gründen. Erstens, ähnlich wie bei der Friedensförderung, baut Migrationsgovernance auf einem komplexen Zusammenspiel von diversen Akteuren auf, das u.a. auch die politische Handlungsfähigkeit von nichtstaatlichen Akteuren hervorhebt. Zweitens, können wir die Idee der Intervention – sowohl externe und interne- als heuristisches Werkzeug nutzen, um die unterschiedlichen politischen Auswirkungen zu differenzieren, die verschiedene Ebenen von Migrationsgovernance haben können. Darauf aufbauend wird das Projekt außerdem die verschiedenen Interessenvertretungen (staatliche und nichtstaatliche) betrachten, die bei der strategischen Entwicklung von Migrationsgovernance beteiligt sind, und ihre Rolle sowie die Art der Einflussnahme beleuchten. Somit wendet das Projekt eine mehrstufige Perspektive an, um zwischen verschiedenen Arten von Handlungsebenen(extern/intern) und Akteuren (staatlich/nichtstaatlich) zu differenzieren. Methodisch ist die Forschung qualitativ und umfasst eine Mischung aus Sekundärforschung (Süd Sudan, Zimbabwe) und Feldforschung (Uganda, Südafrika), welche Interviews und Fokusgruppen beinhaltet. Um partizipative Forschung zu ermöglichen und Ungleichheiten in der Wissensproduktion zu reduzieren, wird die Forschung in enger Kooperation mit Afrikanischen Forscher*innen durchgeführt werden."

With the goal of enhancing the governance capacity and policy coherence of the EU, its member states and neighbors, RESPOND is a comprehensive study of migration governance in the wake of the 2015 Refugee Crisis. Bringing together 14 partners from 7 disciplines, the project probes policy-making processes and policy (in)coherence through comparative research in source, transit and destination countries. RESPOND analyzes migration governance across macro (transnational, national), meso (sub-national/local) and micro-levels (refugees/migrants) by applying an innovative research methodology utilizing legal and policy analysis, comparative historical analysis, political claims analysis, socio-economic and cultural analysis, longitudinal survey analysis, interview based analysis, and photovoice techniques. It focuses in-depth on: (1) Border management and security, (2) International refugee protection, (3) Reception policies, (4) Integration policies, and (5) Conflicting Europeanization and externalization. We use these themes to examine multi-level governance while tackling the troubling question of the role of forced migration in precipitating increasing disorder in Europe. In contrast to much research undertaken on governance processes at a single level of analysis, RESPOND’s multilevel, multi-method approach shows the co-constitutive relationship between policy and practice among actors at all three levels; it highlights the understudied role of meso-level officials; and it shines a light on the activities of non-governmental actors in the face of policy vacuums. Ultimately, RESPOND will show which migration governance policies really work and how migrants and officials are making-do in the too-frequent absence of coherent policies. Adhering to a refugee-centered approach throughout, RESPOND will bring insights to citizenship, gender and integration studies, ensure direct benefit to refugee communities and provide a basis for more effective policy development.

'NADINE project aim is to develop a novel way of integrating migrants and refugees through ICT-enabled solutions that will automatically adapt to the specificities of each person. The consortium agrees that one of the main enablers of migrants/refugees inclusion, in the host societies, is their ability to work. Hence NADINE's motto is 'Give migrants and refugees their dignity back by giving them a decent job with a decent salary'. Taking into account this important factor, NADINE will create an adaptable platform able to: 1) Provide functionalities for skill assessment, 2) dynamically create tailored suited training programs to adapt existing skills into host societies needed skills, 3) provide a digital companion that will suggest and assist the end-users through administrative tasks and 4) create a data lake available to public administration bodies for better organisation of migration flows. NADINE will innovate in several directions from novel training tools, adaptable to different learning setups, to novel ways of information flow handling for public administrations to work efficiently in both business as usual contexts and migration bursts ones. NADINE platform will create potential new markets in different market areas and also will provide novel open tools that will foster new innovation capacity to the EU area.'

Das von der Mercator-Stiftung geförderte Projekt evaluiert von 2018 bis 2021 den Einfluss von Städtenetzwerken auf europäische Migrationspolitik. Es entwickelt prozessbegleitend Handlungsempfehlungen für Politik und Praxis. Zu diesem Zweck werden die Aktivitäten formeller und informeller Netzwerke untersucht. Im Zentrum stehen das Eurocities-Netzwerk, das u.a. den Entstehungskontext der auf Migrationspolitik zielenden Bewegung „Solidarity-Cities“ bildet, sowie der Council of European Municipalities and Regions, der die europäische Dachorganisation nationaler Kommunalverbände darstellt (u.a. Deutscher Städtetag). Dabei werden sowohl die Netzwerkaktivitäten als auch das Handeln einzelner Städte (tentativ: Athen, Barcelona, Essen, Gdansk, Ghent, Leeds, Ljubljana, Palermo) innerhalb der Netzwerke betrachtet.