The ‘epistemic turn’ in immigration policy analysis

Immigration, Bureaucracies and Policy Formulation: The Case of Quebec

“…First, they demonstrate the importance of developing policy capacities in immigration bureaucracies. Immigration policy capacity allows for better advice to elected officials and for a stronger dialogue between immigration research and the political sphere (Scholten and van Nispen, ; Boswell, ). Second, especially in the context of the growing politicization of immigration, these findings show that bureaucracies can be instrumental players in the establishment or the maintenance of societal consensus.…”

“…A third group of research has explored the role of bureaucracies in generating and using knowledge in relation to immigration policy and politics (e.g. Boswell, , ; Scholten and van Nispen, ). This work, most of it European, demonstrates how bureaucracies can be part of an interface between researchers and policymakers but it also describes how public administrations make strategic uses of research.…”

Beyond citizenship: the material politics of alternative infrastructures

“…In the case of the Southern European border where Greece is located, some of the objects enacting infrastructural capture include the Revised Dublin Protocol, the Qualification Directive of 2011, the Asylum Procedures Directive of the EU Migration and, more tangibly, the European Asylum Dactyloscopy (EURODAC) database. The access to governmental forms of humanitarian assistance for migrants in different countries of the EU is highly restricted and comes along with new fences (Boswell 2016), international agreements, massive surveillance technologies (Jacobsen 2015), and official numbers that promote an account of successful implementation of humanitarian policies, or of governmental solidarity.…”