The Global Challenge of Mass Migration and Asylum: Comparative Analysis of Street-Level Organizations at the Front Lines

Abstract

As millions of individuals flee conflict, persecution, and hardship in search of safety and better lives, destination states in Europe and North American have struggled to respond. Street-level theory provides an analytic lens for investigating these struggles and how they evolve on the ground through the informal practices of street-level organizations (SLOs), where the law and individuals meet. This introduction presents an overview of our special issue and its comparative, street-level approach to investigating how SLOs matter to policy, politics, and, ultimately, the lived experience of migrants and refugees.

Keywords:

• Comparative migration policy and politics
• street-level organizations
• asylum law and management
• bureaucracy
• comparative public management
• comparative European politics

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago and the Danish Fund for Independent Research (DFF).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although 75 per cent of the forcibly displaced are living in low- and middle-income countries (UNHCR 2023), the economically advanced states of Northern Europe and North America hold both analytic and pragmatic interest as sought-after destination countries with legal and historical commitments to human rights and the provision of refuge.

2. A full review of this extensive literature is beyond the scope of this article.

3. For purposes of this discussion, we refer variously to laws and policies as formal statements of what states have explicitly committed to do. These expressed commitments, whether made through international conventions, national legislation, or administrative rules and regulations, are crucial in marshalling resources and authority to public purposes. However, as street-level theory and research demonstrate, they are not sufficient to determine what takes place in practice.

4. The references cited here provide illustrative examples of approaches to inquiry that focus variously on formal law and on individual experience. We also note a related line of socio-legal inquiry focusing on legal consciousness and how individuals experience law in everyday life (Merry 1990; Sarat 1990; Silbey 2019). (For examples of this approach as applied to migration studies, see: Schwenken 2013; Abrego 2015; Haddeland 2021; and Güdük and Desmet 2022.

5. Although there have been some notable studies suggesting what a street-level approach can bring to migration research (e.g. Belabas and Gerrits 2017; Miaz 2017; Tomkinson 2018; Infantino 2021), this has been a relatively understudied area of inquiry.

6. This discussion of street-level theory draws on Brodkin (2013), which more fully elaborates issues only briefly outlined here.

7. Over the decades, the field has broadened to include interesting interpretivist and political accounts of implementation processes. However, as argued here and elsewhere, implementation studies tend to be undertheorized in terms of explaining the behavior of the organizations engaged in policy delivery.

Additional information

Funding

Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond [9038-00107A] and Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago

Notes on contributors

Karen N. Breidahl

Karen N. Breidahl is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Denmark, ([email protected]). Her research and publications focus on comparative welfare state politics, socio-cultural integration of immigrants, asylum politics and a street level perspective on citizen-state encounters. Briedahl is co-editor of this special issue.

Evelyn Z. Brodkin

Evelyn Z. Brodkin’s research and writing explore the intersection of welfare state politics, street-level organizations, public policy and management. In research conducted in the US and internationally, she has examined politics and policies from the state-level to the street-level, focusing on issues of poverty and inequality, social and human rights, and international migration. Brodkin is emerita associate professor at the University of Chicago. She is co-editor of this special issue.

Jonathan Miaz

Jonathan Miaz is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Lausanne. His research and writing explore the relationships between law, politics and society, especially law implementation by street-level organizations, legal mobilizations by social movements and non-profit organizations, and processes of judicialization of public policies. He specifically studied the Swiss asylum policy, immigration detention, and the subnational implementation of human rights treaties. Miaz is co-editor of this special issue.