How to deal with complexity in migration policymaking: bringing quality into the processs

Migration and migration-related diversity represent key examples of how complexity challenges conventional modes of governance. This is often reflected in a ‘crisis mode’ in governance, such as the alleged ‘migration crisis’, ‘integration crisis’, multicultural crisis’, ‘asylum crisis’, etc. What does this ‘crisis-mode’ say about the quality of complexity governance? And how can we rethink and enhance the quality of governance to facilitate more reflexive problem-solving in the face of complexity? The objective of this study is to reconceptualise and redesign the role of quality in policymaking regarding societal complexity, using migration and (migration-related) diversity governance as revelatory cases. Complexity trumps a ‘simple’ understanding of the policy process in terms of singular factors as knowledge, power, discourses or institutions. We study how complexity changes policymaking, and how the policy process can be redesigned to boost its rational, democratic, discursive and institutional quality. Our perspective involves a situated understanding of how the interplay of policy factors (knowledge, power, discourses, institutions) can enhance the problem-solving capacity of policies in the face of complexity. This involves a critical view on how the social interaction amongst actors in ‘the policy process’ involves the use of knowledge of expertise, engagement with and accountability towards relevant publics, the construction of credible policy narratives and the development of legitimate institutions.