Going Subnational: Immigration Responses and Immigrant Integration Policies of Sub-State Actors in Multi-Level States

Abstract

Immigration and immigrant integration have increasingly become a salient issue in numerous countries. States experiencing multi-levels politics and federations are no exception. Several factors, including increased decentralization and local autonomy, have supported an intensification of subnational policymaking in these policy sectors. As a result, independently-developed immigration selection programs and subnational immigrant integration policies are co-existing with national policies. This new and changing immigration policy landscape, characterized by a growing involvement of subnational governments, need to be explored. So far, most of the research on this tendency has focused on the impact of sub-state nationalism and linguistic differences on discourses and policies surrounding immigration. As a result, regional immigration or immigrant integration policies of sub-states without national aspirations have far less been scrutinized than those of regions with nationalist aspirations. Moreover, a lot of studies have tended to be country-specific and resistant to comparison. This panel explores this productive research area and aims at filling this gap: What are the responses of sub-state actors to immigration or immigrant integration in multi-level states, with and without nationalist mobilizations? What are the explanatory variables for sub-state immigration and immigrant integration policy convergence or divergence? What typologies can be used? What can be gained from comparing across regions and cities in this policy sector? What is the importance of existing local institutions for the orientation of new immigration policies? How can we explain immigrant integration policy changes at the local level? All papers of this panel provide insightful answers to these questions and engage in a finer definition and categorization of the sub-state responses to immigration and immigrant integration. One the one hand, this panel includes in-depth case studies on immigrant integration policies across different regions and cities in Italy, in Germany, in the Netherlands or in the United States. On the other hand, several papers stimulate theory-building in this growing and promising research on municipal and local immigration and immigrant integration policymaking. By doing so, the panel tries to explain how and why local governments get involved in immigration and immigrant integration policymaking and highlights the consequences of dynamics of administrative decentralization for newcomers. The different contributions will foster dialogue but also allow for new linkages between the literature on subnational and local immigration policymaking.