GLOBAL DIVERSITIES Mainstreaming versus Alienation A Complexity Approach to the Governance of Migration and Diversity Peter Scholten mpimmg Global Diversities Series Editors Steven Vertovec Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity Göttingen, Germany Peter van der Veer Department of Religious Diversity Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity Göttingen, Germany Ayelet Shachar Department of Ethics, Law, and Politics Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity Göttingen, Germany Over the past decade, the concept of ‘diversity’ has gained a leading place in academic thought, business practice, politics and public policy across the world. However, local conditions and meanings of ‘diversity’ are highly dissimilar and changing. For these reasons, deeper and more comparative understandings of pertinent concepts, processes and phe- nomena are in great demand. This series will examine multiple forms and configurations of diversity, how these have been conceived, imagined, and represented, how they have been or could be regulated or governed, how different processes of inter-ethnic or inter-religious encounter unfold, how conflicts arise and how political solutions are negotiated and practiced, and what truly convivial societies might actually look like. By comparatively examining a range of conditions, processes and cases revealing the contemporary meanings and dynamics of ‘diversity’, this series will be a key resource for students and professional social scientists. It will represent a landmark within a field that has become, and will con- tinue to be, one of the foremost topics of global concern throughout the twenty- first century. Reflecting this multi-disciplinary field, the series will include works from Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, Law, Geography and Religious Studies. While drawing on an international field of scholarship, the series will include works by current and former staff members, by visiting fellows and from events of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Relevant manu- scripts submitted from outside the Max Planck Institute network will also be considered. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15009 Peter Scholten Mainstreaming versus Alienation A Complexity Approach to the Governance of Migration and Diversity Peter Scholten Erasmus University Rotterdam Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands ISSN 2662-2580 ISSN 2662-2599 (electronic) Global Diversities ISBN 978-3-030-42237-0 ISBN 978-3-030-42238-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42238-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Joe Raedle / Staff/ Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface At the source of this book is a profound curiosity and amazement as to how societies ‘govern’ migration and migration-related diversity. This book brings together pretty much everything I have learned on what drives migration and diversity policymaking. At an early stage of my career I came to understand that rationality only goes part of the way towards explaining policymaking in these areas. I was increasingly drawn towards the study of these policy areas, intrigued by why much of the (rationalist) toolkit that I had learned as policy scientist did not help me to understand policymaking in these areas. For some reason I didn’t come across many other policy scientists in these areas, although many were focusing on comparable ‘wicked’ policy problems such as climate change, welfare state reform and (to a lesser degree) gender. Since then it has become my mission to develop a better theoretical understanding of the dynamics of migration and diversity policymaking that will contribute to the policy sciences. The road towards this mission was paved with many ‘complexities’. My efforts to develop a firm grasp of migration studies literature has given me a thorough understanding of migration and diversity (such as social, historical, economic) phenomena. Based on this understanding I thought I was able to see when policies were right or wrong, or even ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For instance, whether promoting ‘immigrant integration’ was good or bad, whether integration v vi Preface measures worked or did not work, or whether recognizing environment- induced migration or ‘climate refugees’ was right or wrong. However, this approach did not really help me to understand the logic of policymaking. It was informed by a rationalist view of policymaking as being driven by a serious conversation with the problem situation. My work on reflexive research-policy dialogues (PhD thesis, DIAMINT project) provided initial insights into what was later to become the core framework for this book. Developing the notion of reflexivity as part of research-policy relations made it clear that reflexivity was hardly ever achieved. It seemed to me that there was something amiss with the qual- ity of the policy process in the areas of migration and diversity. Reflexivity appeared as a ‘counterfactual’ condition revealing what was missing. In subsequent research projects I explored what could be driving poli- cymaking, if it was not rationality or reflexivity. In one of my main con- tributions to policy science so far, I showed that the concept of ‘multi-level governance’ assumed a far too well-structured and organized governance approach when compared to the chaotic and disorganized governance relations that I encountered. What I found was disjoined rather than multi-level governance, but once again I did not really understand why this was so. In the IMAGINATION project, my colleagues and I showed that the governance of intra-EU mobility was driven by decoupling between various policy actors and levels on a profound level of defining intra-EU mobility. My colleagues and I arrived at similar observations in another project on Cities of Migration. This project showed that, in spite of all the theo- rizing and philosophizing on models of integration and migration gover- nance, there was no ‘one-size-fits-all’. Migration and diversity took as many configurations as there were cities in our project, and policy responses differed even more significantly. Importantly, when theorizing that there was a systematic connection between ‘types of diversity’ and ‘modes of local governance’, we observed only a slight correlation. Once more, I was struck by the complex nature of migration and diversity gov- ernance, while lacking the conceptual and theoretical tools to make sense of this complexity. Preface vii Inspiration came from yet another project (UPSTREAM), where we applied the notion of mainstreaming from other policy areas such as gen- der, disability and climate change to the areas of migration and diversity. The literatures from those areas shed much light on how policymaking in these complex, broad and often contested areas differs from the more organized and structured nature of policymaking in other areas. Yet here too, mainstreaming as a concept, especially when compared with gender mainstreaming, represented a counterfactual rather than the actual reality of policymaking. Sometimes it is strange how the answer is actually staring you straight in the face if only you know how to phrase the question precisely. This realization dawned on me when I became aware that the quality of the policy process, or the ‘logic’ of policy dynamics, echoed something that I had come across years ago as a PhD student in the work of the American policy scientists Anna Schneider and Helen Ingram. Although I was coming from a totally different perspective than the once they had taken more than 25 years earlier, I was also becoming aware of how and why policies sometimes tend to follow a degenerative logic. Since then, I have been working to reconstruct everything I have learned so far in terms of what I have come to define as mainstreaming versus alienation as a dual nature of policymaking on complex policy issues. By that time, I had worked on very different aspects of migration and diversity policymaking and could reconstruct various dimensions of mainstreaming versus alienation in line with the four major traditions in the policy sciences: rationalism, institutionalism, constructivism and the political perspective. The circle was complete and I knew that I could start writing the book that now lies before you. I had gone from being astounded as to why much of the policy theory I had learnt didn’t apply to migration and diversity, to an in-depth engagement with migration studies and finally, to a better understanding of policymaking in complex policy areas. This should hopefully lead to a book of value to migration scholars and policy scientists alike. The result of my quest is a very critical understanding of policymaking that seeks to contribute to a better grasp of policymaking on migration and diversity. A while ago, I might have written a book on everything viii Preface that is ‘wrong’ with migration and diversity governance without having a thorough understanding of why things appeared to go ‘wrong’ or how actors could be empowered to act differently. This book is not meant as a relativist account (‘everything is just so complex’) nor as a deconstructive account (‘actors do everything wrong’). Rather it is meant as a construc- tive account that will enable scholars to understand how and why migra- tion and diversity policies are shaped in response to complexity and empower actors involved in policymaking to better grasp and deal with complexity. I am deeply indebted to a very long list of names and institutions for making this book possible, or more generally, for assisting me on the long road that has led to this book. Without aspiring to be complete, I wish to start by thanking my direct colleagues at Erasmus University Rotterdam with whom I’ve worked on the projects that set me on the journey towards this book in the first place: Han Entzinger (DIAMINT and many other projects), Godfried Engbersen and Mark van Ostaijen (IMAGINATION), Asya Pisareveskaya and Zeynep Kasli (Cities of Migration) and Ilona van Breugel with whom we started to explore the concept of mainstreaming for the first time in the context of the UPSTREAM project. I would also like to thank my colleagues from the IMISCOE Research Network for their inspiration and support. In the very early days of my career, IMISCOE was where I took my first steps in migration research as a policy science PhD. Since then I have experienced IMISCOE as a rare example of a reflexive research community, with scholars coming together from very different backgrounds under precisely the conditions that are developed in this book for ‘reflexivity’. Their trust, openness, feedback and sometimes also straightforward criticism has been a (perhaps even ‘the’) key driver behind this book. Being inspired and knowing what to write is not the same thing as actually getting a book written. Therefore, a special word of thanks to the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute, which has been kind enough to host me during several writing retreats. A word of thanks to those who have been kind enough to donate their precious time and go through earlier drafts of this book: Lars Tummers and Bram Steijn (for helping me into the world of ‘policy alienation’), Victor Bekkers and Menno Fenger (with whom I’ve worked on the four Preface ix dimensions of policy literature), Andrew Geddes, Steven Vertovec (for helping me to understand the governance of ‘superdiversity’), Maria Schiller, Han Entzinger, Godfried Engbersen, Geert Teisman (for helping me navigate the world of complexity governance) and the entire PRIMUS team at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Asya, Nathan, Ilona, Zeynep, Ronald, Warda, Sevgi and Karin). Also a special word of thanks to Liz Butijn-Cross from Crossover Translations for proofreading this manuscript. Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland Peter Scholten The Netherlands 22 April 2019