Call for Papers, Panel on “Going sub-national: immigration responses and immigrant integration policies of sub-state actors in multi-level states”, 2018 ECPR General Conference, Hamburg. The panel will be part of the Section 28 (ECPR Standing Group on Migration and Ethnicity) “Evaluating Policies of Immigrant Integration and Their Outcomes: A Critical Assessment from a Multilevel Perspective”
Panel Chairs: Dr Verena Wisthaler (Swiss Forum for Population and Migration Studies, University of Neuchâtel, and Eurac Research, Bozen) and Catherine Xhardez (Sciences Po Paris)
This Panel discusses independently-developed immigration selection programs and sub-national immigrant integration policies co-existing with national policies to stimulate theory-building in this research area. The Panel includes case studies on immigrant integration policies across various world regions.
Abstract: Immigration and immigrant integration have increasingly become a salient political issue in numerous countries. States experiencing multi-levels politics and federations are no exception. Several factors, including increased decentralization and local autonomy, have supported an intensification of sub-national policy-making in these policy sectors. As a result, independently developed immigration selection programs and sub-national immigrant integration policies are co-existing with national policies. So far, most of the research on this tendency has focused on the impact of sub-state nationalism and linguistic differences on discourses and policies surrounding immigration. As a result, regional immigration or immigrant integration policies of sub-states without national aspirations have far less been scrutinized than those of regions with nationalist aspirations. When it has been, analysis has tended to be country-specific and resistant to comparison.
This panel aims at exploring this productive research area: What are the responses of sub-state actors to immigration or immigrant integration in multi-level states, with and without nationalist mobilizations? What typologies can be used? What are the explanatory variables for sub-state immigration and immigrant integration policy convergence or divergence? What can be gained from comparing across countries and regions in this policy sector? The answers to these questions will likely engage in a finer definition and categorization of the sub-state responses to immigration and immigrant integration. This exercise should also stimulate theory-building in this growing and promising research area. This panel welcomes sub-state case studies from various world regions analyzing sub-state immigrant or immigrant integration responses and policies. Communications providing a strong empirical background as well as a comparison of regions with and without nationalist mobilizations are particularly welcomed.
Submission Information
The submission deadline for proposals is February 10th, 2018. Proposals should not exceed 250 words, and have a clear research question and a hint on the data and methodology the paper relies upon. All proposals should be sent to catherine.xhardez@sciencespo.fr and
verena.wisthaler@eurac.edu
The selected participants will be notified of their acceptance on February 12th and have to register themselves via ECPR before February 15th, 2018.
