Local Turn or Recentralisation? - Role of Local Governments in the Polish Reception Policy in the Times of Crisis

In the times of growing international mobility, challenges related to the refugees’ reception need to be addressed with the engagement of actors operating at various territorial levels. It seems that also local governments could play an active role in reception policies, particularly given the impact that refugee crises have on local communities, and the presumed role of LGs in building the resilience of the states in the face of such crises. At the same time, traditionally the LGs have been involved in migration policies only to a limited extent, especially in relation to refugees’ reception. It is pointed out that nowadays the LGs contribute to the migration policies on their own initiative, including in reception policies. Consequently, the studies on migration policies frequently employ the multi-level governance approach to understand the phenomenon of such local turn (Zapata-Barrero, Caponio, Scholten 2017). Importantly, local authorities not always act in line with the national policies, and sometimes they even overstep their competences to support refugees (Bazurli, Kaufmann 2023). The attitudes of local authorities within migration policies and their drivers are currently a popular subject of research (Lowndes, Polat 2020, Campomori, Ambrosini, 2020, Pettrachin 2023). However, there is still limited research systematically analysing the relationship between these attitudes and their drivers, as well as investigating the normative-legal aspects of local authorities overstepping their competences. Moreover, the aforementioned studies focus mainly on the refugees’ reception in the Mediterranean area or their integration in other European cities. Consequently, there is a lack of studies that analyse the role of LGs in the reception policies of CEE countries from the MLH perspective, even though the refugee crisis has recently become a key topic in these countries as well. Moreover, CEE countries appear to be a particularly interesting research topic due to several factors that differentiate them from other European states and may influence the role of LGs in reception policies. The presented study concentrates on the role of LG in the Polish reception policy in 2021-2026 - including refugees crossing Polish-Belarusian border and flying from the war in Ukraine. It is aimed to: 1) investigate if the response to the growing number of refugees’ is characterised rather by local turn in reception policy, or ongoing recentralisation, and to 2) formulate normative-legal concept explaining the local authorities' legitimacy to go beyond their competences during refugees’ reception. The research is composed of four parts aimed to answer the following research questions: 1) How are the Polish LGs involved in the formulation and implementation of reception policy? 2) What are their attitudes with regard to the refugees’ reception? 3) What are the drivers of such attitudes? 2) can (and how) the LGs’ activity that go beyond their competences be explained from the normative-legal perspective? The research will be conducted with the use of diversified methods, including: desk research analysis, formal-legal and theoretical-legal analysis, and IDIs conducted with local authorities and other actors operating in several dozens units, where refugee reception takes place.