Have migration and diversity become too complex to be effectively governed? Political scientists have long studied how states create policies and governance structures to address migration, yet these often fall short of their goals and there is much talk about the failure of migration governance. Recently, scholars have started examining complexity as a key factor to explain this gap between policy goals and outcomes. This workshop brings together political scientists to explore the role of complexity in migration governance, aiming to advance a research agenda on how to bring (back) in quality to effectively address complex migration and diversity issues.
Political scientists have spent decades analysing migration policies – for instance, how states control their borders, integrate immigrants into their societies or establish links with their non-resident citizens. Despite extensive research, from in depth case studies to aggregated policy indexes (eg IMPIC, DEMIG, EMIX), our understanding of how policies impact the realities they aim to address remains incomplete. In looking for innovative approaches to study migration policy, scholars are turning to complexity as a key explanatory factor as it challenges conventional modes of governance. Complexity changes policy-making insofar as the policy process needs to be redesigned to boost its rational, democratic, discursive and institutional quality. Although the literature has convincingly discussed how migration stands as a key example (revelatory case) of a ‘wicked’ or ‘complex’ policy issue, there is limited scholarship on how complexity plays out on migration governance and how quality can be brought (back) into the policy-making process. This workshop aims to address this gap in the literature by bringing together normative and empirical papers analysing the role of complexity in migration governance and covering cases from all over the world. In doing so, we aim at developing the foundational tools and a research agenda in political science for the study of complexity and quality in migration policy research.
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1: How can complexity be conceptualized in the context of migration governance?
2: How is complexity generated in the context of migration governance?
3: What are the effects of complexity on migration policy?
4: What are the methodological tools needed to capture and measure the effects of complexity on migration policy?
5: How can we enhance the quality of governance to facilitate more reflexive problem-solving in the face of complexity?
1: Normative papers analyzing the role of complexity in migration governance.
2: Empirical papers analyzing the role of complexity in migration governance
3: Methodological papers that seek to measure complexity in migration policy.
4: Papers that reflect on migration as a 'complex' or 'wicked' problem.
5: Studies that reveal the connections across migration policy dimensions and their complexity.
