‘Tuscans are different’: the cognitive dimension of local asylum policymaking during the 2015 European ‘refugee crisis’

ABSTRACT

This article sheds light on the so-far-neglected role of decision-makers’ subjective interpretations and cognitive factors in local asylum policymaking, complementing and challenging the existing literature explaining local policy responses to the 2015 European ‘refugee crisis’. How and why do local decision-makers interpret the environment in which they operate? Do subjective interpretations contribute to influence local asylum policymaking, and how? To analyse these questions, the paper adopts an actor-centred approach grounded on framing and sensemaking theories and on Bevir and Rhodes’ concept of ‘situated agency’, and it develops a methodology based on anonymous interviews and social network analysis. Such an approach is applied to the heuristic case of Tuscany, an Italian region where the local asylum policies produced during the ‘crisis’ cannot be convincingly explained by looking merely at structural, institutional or strategic factors. Three arguments are developed here. First, at least in situations of ‘crisis’, local decision-makers are not mere passive recipients of information, but active interpreters and rationalizers, whose subjective interpretations result from framing processes and several judgement heuristics. Second, these interpretations can decisively influence local migration policymaking. Third, these interpretations can be also shaped by policy outputs, meaning that local asylum policymaking processes can have important constitutive effects.

KEYWORDS:

• frames
• Italy
• asylum policies
• ‘refugee crisis’
• migration politics

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank Professor Andrew Geddes, the special issue editors and the anonymous reviewers for their very useful feedback and comments.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Ramella (2010, p. 309) defines a ‘territorial political subculture’ as: ‘a “system of signification” (visions of the world, norms, social practices, etc.) which helps to define the actors’ political identities in the background of historically and territorially defined contexts’.

2 Questions were referred to the period analysed (2015–mid-2018). Interviews, conducted in Italian, were transcribed and imported into NVivo for coding. The selected quotations were translated into English.

3 Municipalities could adopt a direct role in asylum seekers’ reception only by voluntarily adhering to the so-called ‘SPRAR system’, a parallel reception system based on small reception structures (partially funded by municipal resources) that guaranteed higher reception standards. This network was mostly conceived for beneficiaries of international protection and hosted a very small percentage of asylum seekers.

4 See: http://accoglienza.toscana.it/documents/882515/882891/PDF+LIBRO+BIANCO/f95ad8a5-0209-4482-81c9-a35251dba070/.

5 Betweenness centrality measures the number of shortest paths (between any couple of nodes) that pass through the given node.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC), under the European Union’s Seven Framework Programme (FP-7/2007-2013), Grant Agreement Number 340430 (‘Prospects for International Migration Governance’) awarded to Professor Andrew Geddes.