Multi-Level Governance of Civic Integration Policies: the Case of Czechia

In migration studies, scholars differ in their emphasis on which government level plays the central role in integration policies. There are voices drawing attention to a “local turn”, highlighting the rising power of local actors in immigrant integration. At the same time, other authors point out a “national turn” connected to the implementation of civic integration policies. With the examination of the case of Czechia, this article asks how different actors, involved at various levels of government, participate in civic integration policy-making. To answer this question, the paper applies the framework of multilevel governance, used by several immigrant integration scholars in the last decade, to study civic integration practice. As these specific policies have been investigated namely through the state-centred perspective so far, employing the multilevel governance approach accounts for a novelty in the literature. The research subsequently reveals how this concept helps to uncover the involvement of other levels of government and various actors in civic integration policy-making, thus disproving the declared national turn caused by civic integration implementation. In addition, the paper brings new knowledge about immigrant integration policies from a region considerably omitted in the migration literature.