Multilevel governance concept on migration: A qualitative meta-synthesis

Abstract

Research on migration governance at the local level in European countries often refers to the perspective of multilevel governance (MLG) by examining the roles of different levels of government, non-governmental actors, and various negotiations between actors at various scales. This study aims to synthesize qualitative evidence from primary studies to understand systematically better and explore themes that intersect with multilevel governance studies in migration. This meta-synthesis process is done by thematic synthesis following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). The study results show that multilevel governance and migration strengthen on themes such as actors, governance, implementation, integration, and interaction. Based on the analysis of word similarity in the 500-word cloud, it was also found to be the top dominant, such as policy, local, cities, urban, governance, migration, level, integration, government, and social. The study recommends research directions for non-European countries by examining the adaptation of the MLG concept, analyzing the impact of decentralization on the effectiveness of MLG, looking at public-private sector partnerships in developing countries, as well as comparative studies between non-European countries to contribute to the theory of multilevel governance. This study implies that there still needs to be research on multilevel governance in the field of migration that specifically conducts qualitative meta-synthesis.