Local integration policymaking, multi-level policy networks and the covid-19 crisis. A cross-country cross-locality analysis.

Local integration policy is a growing field of research in Europe, especially after the so-called 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. While local governments are increasingly involved in integration policymaking, a growing number of actors is involved in local integration governance (Schiller 2019). Scholars have argued that patterns of interaction between actors within local ‘policy networks’ are key to explain local official decisions, practices, prevailing frames (e.g. Pastore and Ponzo, 2019). Moving from these premises, this paper addresses the following questions: what are the factors that influence key features of local integration policy networks and coalitions therein? And how did the pandemic affect interactions within these networks? To answer these questions, we develop a social network analysis elaborating data collected in the framework of the H2020 Whole-COMM project about actors’ interactions within local integration policy networks in 49 localities (across 10 countries). These localities are characterised by different socio-economic situations and demographic trends, different previous experience with immigration, institutional frameworks and have local governments of different political affiliations. The paper concludes by generating some hypotheses about the factors that might explain the key above-mentioned features of local policy networks and the impact of the pandemic on actors’ interactions within these networks.