The battleground of asylum and immigration policies: a conceptual inquiry

Abstract

Scholarship has sought to develop theoretical frameworks to set order on the rather muddled web of actors, interactions and tensions involved in asylum and immigration policies. The article considers three of them: the “venue shopping approach”, the “multi-level governance approach” and critical humanitarian studies. The purpose is to contribute to this debate by elaborating the concept of “battleground” of asylum (and immigration) policies. With this concept, I mean that they are a contentious field in which different actors interact, cooperating or conflicting. Different levels of public responsibility are involved but also non-public actors play a role. They encompass various pro-migrant supporters but also xenophobic movements. The article will analyse the crucial actors involved, with a focus on the local level: pro-refugee civil society; coalitions of diverse pro-refugee actors; opponents to refugee reception; local governments acting for and against refugee and migrant reception and asylum seekers and irregular immigrants themselves.