Justice / Publication
October 11, 2023

The inconsistency of immigration policy: the limits of “Top-down” approaches

This paper argues that immigration policies on paper often cannot be read as coherent statements of government goals, due to states combining conflicting objectives over time. It introduces a way to measure this inconsistency and finds limited support for national-level explanations, calling instead for research on how local actors, especially frontline bureaucrats and migrants, shape migration policy in practice.

Abstract

To what extent can we infer government objectives from policies on paper? We show that this assumption in migration scholarship is problematic because most states adopt immigration policies that are inconsistent, combining or alternating between contradictory objectives. Further, we develop a measure to track how immigration policy inconsistency varies over time. We use these methods to demonstrate that some of the main theories of policy inconsistency, which focus on variables located at the national scale, find limited empirical support. Based on these findings, we make the case for further research into the local scale of politics, focusing on the agency of street-level bureaucrats and migrants. We then discuss the potential for crossing quantitative and qualitative divides in order to further explore the impact of local factors on national immigration policies.

To continue reading please visit: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2023.2263076

This open access article was published in Ethnic and Racial Studies on 11 October 2023.

Vigneswaran, D., & de León, E. (2024). The inconsistency of immigration policy: the limits of “Top-down” approaches. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(10), 2060–2084. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2023.2263076

Keywords: Migration policy, Inconsistency, State capacity, Mixed methods, Micro-politics, Scale