Immigrant integration policymaking in Italy: regional policies in a multi-level governance perspective
| Author | Francesca Campomori,Tiziana Caponio |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315611238 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(2) 303–321
Immigrant integration
! The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315611238
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Francesca Campomori
University of Venice, Italy
Tiziana Caponio
University of Turin and Collegio Carlo Alberto, Italy
Abstract
This article contributes to the debate on the ‘local governance turn’ by considering a
recent immigration context: the Italian case. We analyse integration policies and gov-
ernance processes in three regions: Lombardy, Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna. The aim
is to shed new light on the multi-level governance relations that shape immigrant inte-
gration policies, taking into account the interdependencies of the vertical and horizontal
dimensions of multi-level governance. The analysis points out the emergence of differ-
ent multi-level governance arrangements and highlights the relevance of institutional and
organisational factors in accounting for local differentiation. General traditions and
established public–non-governmental organisation relations in the social policy field,
the internal organisation of the regional administration (specialised staff versus general
bureaucratic apparatus), and the role of ideology appear to make a difference. The
implications of this analysis for multi-level governance scholarship are discussed,
emphasising the need for a middle-range theory approach.
Points for practitioners
Multi-level governance is considered by policy scholars as a promising approach to make
sense of increasingly complex policymaking processes, implying the interaction between
different levels of government and between public and non-public actors. By considering
the politically sensitive immigrant integration issue, this article attempts to point out
how multi-level governance relations concretely take shape at the regional level in Italy,
and which factors account for regional differentiation. Our study suggests that con-
textual and organisational factors are particularly relevant, that is, social policy
Corresponding author:
Tiziana Caponio, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society and Collegio Carlo Alberto, University of
Turin, Via Real Collegio, 30, 10024 Moncalieri TO, Italy.
Email: tiziana.caponio@unito.it
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(2)
traditions, the regions’ internal organisation and the individual civil servants’ attitudes.
Nevertheless, politics should also be carefully taken into account.
Keywords
immigrant integration, multi-level governance arrangements, policymaking, regional-
level perspective
Introduction
Since the emergence of a scholarship on migration policy in Europe in the mid-
1980s (see Hammar, 1985), the nation-state has been assumed as the ‘natural’
context of development of immigration (Brochmann and Hammar, 1999) and
immigrant policies (Castles and Miller, 2003). With regard to these latter, the
notion of the ‘immigrant integration model’ has experienced particular success
(for a critical appraisal, see Duyvendack and Scholten, 2012). Yet, at the beginning
of the 2000s, a different perspective started to gain momentum, emphasising the
centrality of the local level as the appropriate locus for the analysis of integration
dynamics (see the Introduction to this special issue).
In this emerging literature, the notion of multi-level governance (MLG) has been
applied so far in a descriptive and intuitive manner (Zincone and Caponio, 2006),
often to simply indicate that different institutions, placed at various levels of gov-
ernment, intervene in policymaking. Migration scholars seem to have just started to
reflect on the theoretical implications of their analyses for the study of policy
processes in complex multi-level settings and vis-a-vis a particularly politicised
issue such as immigration.
This article, by looking at immigrant integration policymaking in Italy, intends
to make sense of the emergence of different MLG arrangements: the products of
the interactions taking place across different levels of government, the so-called
vertical dimension, and between the different public and non-public actors, that is,
the horizontal dimension. As a consequence, we postulate the necessity of more in-
depth investigation to identify the influential factors in determining specific
arrangements in different regional contexts.
In the next section, we clarify our approach and propose an analytical framework
to examine MLG arrangements for immigrant integration. In the third section, we
describe the multi-level framework of immigrant integration policy in Italy from a
diachronic perspective and argue for the crucial relevance of the regions (details on
the methodological approach are also provided). We then move to a description of
MLG arrangements in three regions – Lombardy, Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna –
considering the relationships between regional governments, local authorities and
non-state actors. The fifth section is dedicated to a discussion of the research find-
ings, in particular, the factors that account for the emergence of different types of
MLG in the Italian regions’ integration policies. The final remarks highlight the
contribution of this study to the MLG literature more generally.
Campomori and Caponio
305
Making sense of MLG arrangements for immigrant
integration: an analytical framework
Over the last three decades, the national state has been deeply transformed by
challenges to its centralised nature, as well as its hegemony in policymaking pro-
cesses. On the one hand, the parallel processes of supranationalisation, with the
emergence of the European Union (EU), and regionalisation, or devolution in a
wide sense, made the relations between state, supra-state and sub-state units more
and more complex and interdependent; on the other hand, new actors, that is, non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) or private associations and international cap-
ital markets, began to have a say in decision-making and implementation phases,
thus nurturing a growing interdependence between the state and non-state actors.
The concept of MLG gained consensus in this scenario; starting with the seminal
work of Marks (1992), the concept has been applied first and foremost to analyse
and explain how the EU integration process actually functions, and thus to chal-
lenge the assumptions of competing intergovernmentalist and functionalist theories
(see Schmitter, 2004).
Parallel to this prevailing research stream on Europeanisation (for a recent
review, see Stephenson, 2013), other strands of literature in political science
employ the concept of MLG to emphasise the limits of governmental authority and
claim the need for more flexible forms of coordination between independent and
yet mutually interdependent actors (see Hooghe and Marks, 2003). Federalism
and local government studies are particularly relevant: the former examines the
optimal allocation of authority across multiple tiers of government; whereas the
latter focuses mainly on the appropriate size and division of functions for an
efficient provision of public services. As is clear, in both strands of literature,
a normative understanding of MLG prevails.
This study intends to contribute to scholarly debates on MLG by adopting an
analytical and empirical perspective. To date, empirical studies on MLG have
primarily considered EU cohesion policy and environmental policy (Piattoni,
2010). The few studies applying this concept to immigrant integration (see
Hepburn and Zapata-Barrero, 2014; Joppke and Seidle, 2012) focus on the rela-
tions between central state and regional institutions, whereas regional governance
has not been investigated. To address this gap, in this article, we undertake an in-
depth study of regional policymaking processes on immigrant integration; we look
at both the governance dynamics in relation to local authorities and to NGOs.
An influential attempt to define empirical instances of intergovernmental rela-
tions is represented by Hooghe and Marks’s (2003) two MLG (ideal-)types. Type I
regards general purpose government and resembles the conventional federal
system, while Type II has the shape of a task-specific government, designed
around a certain policy issue, for example, school districts and health units, but
also irrigation farmers or software producers. The two concepts are conceived as
having in mind MLG mainly in the field of Europeanisation and internationalisa-
tion, where examples of Type II jurisdictions are abundant. Our focus on sub-state
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(2)
governance makes it difficult to adopt this model. In its turn, the comprehensive
analysis of Piattoni (2010) proposes a plotting of the conceptual space of MLG on
three axes whose origins are in the ideal-typical sovereign nation-state. The first
axis is about decentralisation, the second indicates internationalisation processes
and the third portrays the movement away from the clear-cut distinction between
the public and the private (Piattoni, 2010: 27–30). Considering this scheme, our
analysis can be placed primarily along the first and third axes, that is, sub-state
devolution processes and state–society relations. Bache and Flinders (2004: 3)
define MLG exactly as the intersection of these two axes or dimensions: the
centre–periphery or vertical dimension, which...
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