Cross-national convergence in times of crisis? Integration policies before, during and after the refugee crisis

Abstract

This article analyses if, how and why Scandinavian integration policies converged as a result of the refugee crisis in 2015, studying policies of permanent residence, citizenship, family reunification and access to social benefits. The analysis of policy processes finds that a logic of regulatory competition led to goal convergence, as all three countries explicitly adapted their policies relative to other countries’ policies. Nonetheless, when comparing the configuration of policy instruments and their settings, the cross-national gap persists as all three countries took restrictive steps, thus showing traits of path dependency. The conclusion discusses a severe challenge in the current policy convergence debate in the integration literature: how an insufficient level of precision (1) concerning different dimensions of the policies and (2) concerning how to assess convergence could lead to inaccurate and even opposite conclusions when interpreting empirical analyses.

Keywords:

• Immigration policy
• integration policy
• refugee crisis
• policy convergence
• comparative analysis

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Thanks also for comments on earlier drafts from Grete Brochmann, Jostein Askim and Anton Steen, and from participants in the workshop ‘Public Management Reforms for Transboundary Policy Challenges: Coordination for Integration, Crisis Organizing and Beyond’ at NOPSA 2017 and the department seminar in September 2017 at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo.

Notes

1. In this article, the ‘refugee crisis’ refers to the situation European governments were facing due to the high influx of refugees in 2015.

2. For example, the 2001 ‘Directive on Temporary Protection’, the 2003 ‘Directive on the Right to Family Reunification’, the 2003 ‘Directive on the Status of Non-EU Nationals who are Long-Term Residents’ and, more recently, the 2016 ‘Action Plan on the Integration of Third-Country Nationals’.

3. When looking at immigration policies targeting all migrants, this mechanism could result in two contrary objectives and subsequent mechanisms: A race to attract high-ability immigrants and a race to appear not to be an attractive destination country for less attractive migrants (Damm and Åslund 2017: 14). However, since this study focuses on the refugee crisis and policies targeting refugees, a race to become less attractive to asylum seekers is the expected mechanism.

4. Integration policies incorporate many different sub-policies. In some areas, Scandinavian integration policies are relatively similar in a European context, for example, their extensive introduction programmes for refugees (Hernes and Trondstad 2014). Still, for the four sub-policies under study, which focus on policies particularly relevant for the immigration‒integration nexus, earlier analyses show highly divergent policies (Borevi et al. 2017).

5. Proposition 2015/16:174 – Tillfälliga begränsningar av möjligheten att få uppehållstillstånd i Sverige, p. 29.

6. This article does not evaluate the overall convergence‒divergence debate between Joppke and Goodman. The two studies discussed in this article are merely used to exemplify how imprecision about how different policy dimensions are weighted can complicate cross-study comparisons.