Policy Analysis and Europeanization: An Analysis of EU Migrant Integration Policymaking

Abstract

Abstract: This article analyses EU-level research–policy infrastructures and their role in the Europeanization of migrant integration policies at a time of perceived crisis and policy failure. Rather than focusing on either knowledge utilization or knowledge production, it focuses on what we call “knowledge infrastructures” or different ways of mobilizing research with specific purposes of knowledge utilization. Rather than finding one dominant configuration of research–policy relations, various infrastructures that co-exist and sometimes even overlap were found. Besides EU-sponsored infrastructures aimed primarily at horizontal exchange of knowledge and information between countries and between cities, there were also infrastructures that were more directly related to EU policy goals as well as an infrastructure that mobilized research as an informal tool to monitor policy compliance. This shows that the use of research in Europeanization does not always mean “going technical”, but that precisely when the EU lacks formal competencies such as in the area of migrant integration policies, mobilizing specific types of research can form part of a political strategy designed to reinforce policy objectives.