The Politics of Immigration in Multi-Level States

Governance and Political Parties

E. Hepburn, R. Zapata-Barrero, E. Hepburn, R. Zapata-Barrero

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137358523
• eBook ISBN: 9781137358530
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book develops an exploratory theory of immigration in multilevel states addressing two themes: governance and political parties. It examines not only how, and by whom, immigration policy is decided and implemented at different levels, but also how it has become a key-issue of party competition across multilevel states.

Part I

Conceptual Framework

1

Introduction: Immigration Policies in Multilevel States

Eve Hepburn and Ricard Zapata-Barrero

The context and academic debate

Immigration has become one of the most contested issues in advanced democracies. Blamed for threatening national cultures and disrupting social cohesion, immigration has also been identified as the only way to mitigate the pending demographic crises of Western states. Yet despite these demographic arguments, there are few issues that have aroused the concern of electorates more than the prospect of rapid social change resulting from migration. This issue has become increasingly apparent in light of the Arab Spring, which has prompted new population movements. A survey on public attitudes towards migration in six European states revealed that a significant share of citizens is apprehensive about immigration, often perceiving it as a threat to employment, public order, and safety (Diamanti and Bordignon, 2005). We also believe that there are difficulties in tracing a clear dividing line between the social and political rhetoric of these perceptions (Zapata-Barrero and Díez-Nicolas, 2012). This edited book corroborates a number of studies highlighting the potentially destabilizing effects of immigration on the politics and societies of host states (Messina, 2002).

Immigration-related issues have risen to the top of the public policy agenda of the European Union (EU) and its member states (Messina and Thouez, 2002), resulting in a widespread tightening of illegal immigration controls (Coleman, 2002: 47). In response to such concerns, many countries have seen a public and media backlash against increasing immigration, the emergence of grassroots anti-immigrant protests (Della Porta, 1996; Gómez-Reino, 2002: 132; Tyler and Marciniak, 2013), the rise of radical-right anti-immigrant parties in statewide elections (Zaslove, 2004; Mudde, 2007), and the need to build a new European discourse on tolerance (Zapata-Barrero and Triandafyllidou, 2012).

However, in federal and devolved multilevel systems, immigration is not only an important issue at the state level; it has also become a key concern for sub-state political units (Zapata-Barrero, 2009; Joppke and Seidle, 2012). With the decentralization of powers to sub-state levels of government, regional assemblies have been empowered with control over large sections of social and economic policy, including health, education, housing, culture, the environment, planning, and economic development (Keating, 2001; Marks et al, 2008). And although immigration policy generally falls under the rubric of central-state control, being governed by the state’s citizenship rules and requirements, certain aspects of migration policy have devolved to the sub-state level¹ – most notably, migrant integration policies but also in some cases control over admissions/selection, such as in Quebec. The primary reason why regions have been steadily gaining powers over migration is because many sub-state policy areas ‘overlap’ with issues of migration, which affects regional demographic growth, the labour market, economic development, and the delivery of public services (such as schooling, health and social care, and housing). As such, some sub-state territories are seeking, and being granted, more control over migration issues (Joppke and Seidle, 2012). The decentralization of such a key policy area is also indicative of a general trend towards the ‘decentralization’ of states in Europe, which acknowledges that sub-state territories are important political, social, and economic communities for citizens – including migrants (Keating, 2001; Hepburn, 2010a).

Furthermore, the impact of immigration on sub-state societies, public services, and economies has necessitated a response from sub-state political actors. And, as in other policy areas, sub-state governments and parties may adopt quite distinctive policies on migration, which may diverge from, or even contradict, those of the state. While some sub-state territories may seek to distinguish themselves from a ‘restrictive’ state by proposing a more progressive approach to migration, others may criticize the state for advocating an open-door policy of migration by proposing more restrictive measures at the sub-state regional level (Hepburn, 2011). This may become an especially contentious issue in cases where sub-state territories are seeking to pursue greater autonomy and must identify what is ‘distinct’ about their culture, and demarcate who belongs to the sub-state community (and equally, who does not) (Banting and Soroka, 2012; Barker, 2012). Often, these sub-state political approaches to immigration conflict directly with central-state (national) models, resulting in tensions over policy coordination and the framing of immigration in different parts of a country.

As immigration has become ‘rescaled’ across several levels of multilevel states, there is an urgent need to develop a deeper understanding of how immigration is governed and framed by political actors across different territorial levels, and to explore the degree of cooperation and contestation between these levels. Immigration has rarely been examined from a multilevel perspective, including the sub-state/devolved view. The vast majority of works on immigration focus on the state level, and more recently on the European level. Yet, it is precisely at this sub-state territorial level that migrants seek full participation in the social, economic, and cultural life of a host community. Sub-state territories now hold substantial power over the rights of citizenship – social, cultural, economic, and political – and control over institutions that provide access to participation and belonging. This has important implications for migrant integration. As a representative of the EU Committee of the Regions (CoR) recently argued, ‘regional authorities play a decisive role in creating the right conditions for third-country nationals to access a whole range of public services, including above all education, healthcare, employment and housing. Cities and regions are the linchpins that enables immigrants to develop a strong and constructive connection with the host society, developing a climate of trust and maintaining social cohesion’ (CoR Press Release, 15 February 2012). The importance of sub-state territorial policy on migration is therefore becoming increasingly recognized.

Yet scholarship on the territorial rescaling of immigration politics and policy across federal and devolved states is hampered by the fact that multilevel politics tend to be understood as an exclusively EU-state relationship. Certainly, the multilevel governance approach evolved from the study of governmental interaction in the European Union. Gary Marks (1993) was one of the first scholars to describe the interactions of governments in the EU context as resulting in multilevel governance. Marks and Hooghe (2001) furthermore presented different types of multilevel governance at the EU level and focused their analysis on the EU-state relationship. But since this elaboration of multilevel governance, there have been far fewer examinations of this multilevel perspective at the state/sub-state political level (for some exceptions, see Hepburn, 2010a; Detterbeck, 2012) nor has it ever been examined with regard to the specific area of immigration, which is clearly a cross-cutting policy issue that affects both levels (see the seminal comparative work by Joppke and Seidle, 2012).

The purposes of the book

The aim of this edited book is therefore to tackle the topical issue of immigration from a widely neglected multilevel perspective that incorporates the analysis of state/sub-state approaches to, and coordination of, immigration policy and politics. The book addresses the complex politics of immigration in states of a federal or devolved nature where immigration, and especially migrant integration, have become ‘overlapping’ policies between central-state and sub-state levels. It also considers the effects and consequences of the ‘territorial rescaling’ of immigration in multilevel political frameworks, seeking to identify the challenges and opportunities for the emergence of different immigration approaches following decentralization. These challenges and opportunities include issues of how migrant integration policy diverges across different regions of a state; intergovernmental relations and coordination between states and sub-state territories on immigration policy; the regionally differentiated economic dimensions of the multilevel integration of immigrants; and the possible tensions arising from migration to a region that considers itself a stateless nation or linguistic minority group.

In order to understand the differences between state and sub-state approaches to immigration, an important part of this analysis is to examine immigration through the prism of ‘territorial interests’ that dominate the regional level. These territorial interests may be cultural, economic, or political in nature; and immigration affects them all.

With regard to cultural territorial interests, there is a rich body of literature detailing the distinctiveness of regional identities, cultures, and languages within states. For instance, within the EU’s 27 member states, there are 74 sub-state territories with legislative powers and over 100 more regions with administrative powers (AER, 2009). These sub-state territories provide important spaces for social and political attitudes, behaviour, cultures, and identities (Keating, 1996; Henderson, 2010; Hepburn, 2010b). Many of these sub-state territories make claim to a distinctive local culture and traditions that have evolved separately from state-building processes. These include, for instance, the ‘Celtic’ traditions of Galicia in Spain and the ‘Alpine’ traditions of Bavaria in Germany. Sub-state territories also often boast a particular religious concentration, such as the predominance of Catholicism in North-Rhein Westphalia or Presbyterianism in Scotland. Finally, some sub-state territories also speak their own language instead of the central-state language. In addition to the 23 official languages of the EU, there are over 65 more that are spoken at the sub-state level; some of which have been included in the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (CoE, 1992) and many others that have no official recognition at all (Hornsby and Agarin, 2012). These languages provide an important lens through which citizens understand and make sense of the world, and many efforts have been made to prevent their extinction. These culturally distinctive characteristics of regions mean that migrants are often presented with a challenge when moving to a particular sub-state territory: integrating into the culture and learning the language is often more important for their participation in social, political, and economic life than adopting the culture/language of the state. In particular, some sub-state languages may be perceived as more ‘difficult’ to learn than state languages (i.e., Basque and Welsh) while other sub-state territories place an emphasis on learning an accent or dialect as a sign of belonging.

Yet one of the greatest fears of sub-state territories with a strong linguistic identity is the possibility that immigration erodes that linguistic identity (Erk, 2003). As Zapata-Barrero (2007: 12) argues, ‘if the minority community does not have sufficient competencies in the matter, the tendency of the immigrants who settle in the national territory is to integrate into the dominant culture ... if immigrants become integrated into the dominant culture, then the minority nation may become a minority within its own territory’. So immigration raises concerns for the protection of minority languages in sub-state regions and nations, as immigrants often adopt the language of the majority as the best route for social mobility, which subsequently reduces the sub-state population speaking a minority language. As a result, sub-state political actors may view immigration as a threat to their identity, language, customs, traditions, or ways of life. In some cases this has directly led to the rise of anti-immigrant nationalist parties in sub-state territories that have won a large share of the vote (on the Belgian case, see Adam and Jacobs, Erk, and Dandoy in this volume; and for the Spanish case, see the contribution by Franco-Guillén and Zapata-Barrero).

Second, with regard to economic territorial interests, a wealth of scholarly studies has emerged on the issues of regional economic development and regional economic policy (see Storper, 1995; Piore and Sabel, 1984). Sub-state territories are not only viewed as distinctive economic systems and labour markets; they are also seen as autonomous economic actors with devolved economic powers. Economic regionalization means that immigrants must be attuned to the needs of the sub-state economy and labour market when they arrive in their host community (on the German and Italian cases in particular, see Schmidtke and Zaslove’s contribution in this volume). For instance, some sub-state economies are dominated by the tourism industry, others by the services industry, and others by high-tech manufacturing, which may be different from other parts of the country (Storper, 1995). And while some sub-state territories may be performing better in economic terms than the state average, others may be doing poorly (for an examination of regional economic inequality and immigration in the Italian case, see Campomori and Caponio’s chapter). In response, sub-state governments and parties may seek to protect traditional modes of economic development within the sub-state territory (such as an emphasis on small and medium-sized businesses), demanding that the territory requires certain labour-market skills from immigrants in order to maintain the specific territorial mode of economic development (on how this has been encouraged at the local municipal/city level, see Scholten’s analysis of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands).

Third, with regard to political territorial interests, there may exist demands for autonomy and/or independence within the regional and/or statewide party system, which are affected by immigration. Recent studies show that party systems and party competition at the regional level are becoming increasingly distinctive from the state level, whereby statewide parties must operate in a peculiarly regional context and compete on regional issues (Hough and Jeffery, 2006). In response to decentralization, political parties in federal and devolved states have strengthened their sub-state organizational structures and programmes (Detterbeck and Hepburn, 2010). The decentralization of political parties has enabled party branches operating at the sub-state level to diverge in their policy agendas from their statewide ‘parent’ parties. This ‘sub-state dimension’ acquires particular sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I Conceptual Framework
• Part II Governance
• Part III Political Parties
• Index