How do private companies shape responses to migration in Europe? Informality, organizational decisions, and transnational change

Abstract

This article takes an actor-centered and bottom-up perspective to analyze how private companies shape public responses to migration in Europe. It builds on ethnographic research with top managers and civil servants involved in visa policy, asylum reception, and immigration detention. Drawing on organizational theories about decisions and change, I analyze empirical evidence to put forward processes of international migration governance that take account of private and public actors, the implementation stage of policy-making, the organizational and informal dynamics underpinning decisions and change within and across borders of polity, therefore adopting a transnational lens. I show three interrelated aspects: Personal contacts, informal interactions, and informal exchange that promote private companies' business while affecting change in the delivery of public policies; private companies' involvement in decision-making and their engagement in solution-driven processes of change; the diffusion of organizational responses to migration across national contexts, which contribute to transnational change.