Labour and Epistemic Communities: The Case of ‘Managed Migration’ in the UK
| Author | Alex Balch |
| Date | 01 November 2009 |
| Published date | 01 November 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2009.00384.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Labour and Epistemic Communities:
The Case of ‘Managed Migration’ in
the UKbjpi_384613..633
Alex Balch
How do new ideas flow through networks to reframe policy questions, and what role is played by
the growing world of think tanks and policy experts? This article takes the remarkable shift in UK
labour migration policy since 2000 and demonstrates how policy was redesigned by networks of
actors working between and within the worlds of think tanks and government, including the Prime
Minister’s Policy and Innovation Unit (PIU), the Treasury, the Home Office and the Institute for
Public Policy Research (IPPR). The article shows how different kinds of ideas and knowledge flowed
through different actors and networks to influence the reframing of policy, using the epistemic
communities hypothesis (ECH) as a theoretical framework for the analysis.
Keywords: immigration policy; epistemic communities; Labour party; managed
migration
Introduction
This article takes the opportunity to assess the forms and means by which ideas and
knowledge play a role in policy change in the UK by looking at a particular
area—labour migration1—over a decade of policy development: 1997–2007. The
central puzzle is about the adoption of a new policy on labour migration under the
narrative of ‘managed migration’ and how to explain this change, its timing and its
tempo. Of particular use here is the epistemic communities hypothesis (ECH) as
outlined by Peter Haas (1992, 2001 and 2004), which provides a framework that
proposes a role for experts in the change of policy addressing why, when, how and
with what effects governments turn to expertise.
The choice of approach is driven by gaps in our understanding of immigration
policy, particularly with respect to the role of ideas and expertise. The policy area of
labour migration is one that has experienced dramatic change since the late 1990s
as the UK has lurched from a country struggling to keep a lid on immigration to one
opening its arms to extraordinary levels of inward flows. Aspects of immigration
policies have traditionally provided a strong explanatory challenge for theoretical
accounts, which have tended to focus on outcomes and a narrow range of variables
exogenous to the political process, betraying an under-conceptualisation of that
process. International accounts of policy, for example, have emphasised the role of
business interests (Freeman 1995), internationalisation and states’ reduced control
The British Journal of
Politics and International Relations
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2009.00384.x BJPIR: 2009 VOL 11, 613–633
© 2009 The Author.Journal compilation © 2009 Political Studies Association
over borders (Soysal 1994; Sassen 1996) or the liberal influence of courts and
bureaucracies (Guiraudon 2000a), but these offer little understanding of the policy-
making process, and do not offer a good fit with the UK, long described as a
‘deviant’ case (Freeman 1994). We know, for example, that the UK has relatively
weak courts, and has retained its own border regime within the EU (in contrast to
Schengen states). In addition, political elites in the UK are known to enjoy relative
isolation from the ‘organised public’ and lobbying over immigration and conduct
policy in a relatively autonomous way (Statham and Geddes 2006, 266).
Some help is offered by those that emphasise national paradigms in terms of the
links between identity politics and migration policies (Brubaker 1992; Hollifield
1994). In the case of the UK, Randel Hansen’s excellent study of post-war immi-
gration counters some of the weaknesses of traditional accounts. By bringing
political processes back into the analysis, Hansen was able to reject the thesis that
politicians were attempting to ‘whitewash’ Britain (Paul 1997), arguing strongly
that their actions could be considered responsible issue management under the
constraints of the peculiar implications associated with the post-war dismantling of
empire (Hansen 2000). Building on Hansen’s approach and looking at the ‘new era’
of policy post-2000 I reject the thesis that the UK ‘lost control’ over immigration
policy, leading to unprecedented levels of inflows. Instead I argue that policy was
redesigned and redeveloped by a government in the thrall of new ideas about
governance, with epistemic communities assuming a more central role in policy
change. Furthermore, by adopting this perspective, the article addresses the rise and
rise of think tanks and ‘policy experts’ in the sphere of immigration, which to date
has been largely ignored by those seeking to explain policy change.
I argue that research on immigration has been driven by the interest in (subopti-
mal) outcomes, which has created what could be described as an epistemic ‘gap’
into which political processes are assumed, subsumed or reified (e.g. Castles 2004),
and where the political sociology of policy-making is relatively unknown (Sciortino
2000). This gap extends to our understanding of the kinds of ideas and knowledge
that drive policy. There has been some work done on how research fits with policy
in the field of immigration, which confirms a range of problems (Brans et al. 2004;
Martiniello and Florence 2005). The work of Christina Boswell should be men-
tioned here as she has looked in detail at the legitimising and instrumental func-
tions of knowledge utilisation in debates over immigration in the EU (Boswell
2008) and in the UK between 2002 and 2004, and the political dilemmas regarding
expertise (Boswell 2009). This very useful analysis could be complemented by
thinking about why, how and when expertise provides a framing or agenda-setting
role, directing and shaping the debate—that is, consideration of the preconditions
for knowledge utilisation. The argument here is that the discussion over research
usage should take into account the reasons why certain types of knowledge (mac-
roeconomic data, criminal statistics, demographic data, etc.) become more (or less)
salient in the policy debate in the first place.
Finally, the approach taken here is especially apposite considering the legacy of
more than a decade of Labour governments since 1997. On taking office, the new
government was very keen to associate itself with bringing new ideas into policy
and to connect with a youthful and fresh mode of politics that was more open. This
614 ALEX BALCH
© 2009 The Author.Journal compilation © 2009 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2009, 11(4)
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