The entanglement of substantive and symbolic politics in immigrant integration: insights from a regional state in Germany

IF 2.2 4区管理学 Q2 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Policy Studies Pub Date : 2022-05-25 DOI:10.1080/01442872.2022.2080813

M. Schiller, E. Jonitz

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

ABSTRACT When discussing the governance of immigrant integration, researchers and policymakers have gone back and forth in either conceiving national governments as determining immigrant integration or ascribing the local level as a strong influence in this field of policy-making. This article focuses on the regional level instead, which has so far often been left out of the picture. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration in the regional state Baden-Württemberg in Germany, we examine the character of immigrant integration policy-making in Baden-Württemberg in the aftermath of the long summer of migration. Our findings show the pertinence of symbolic uses of integration policies in combination with substantive uses. We make sense of these findings in light of an increased role of the regional level, the intrinsic symbolic character of immigrant integration, and the resurgence of anti-immigrant politics after 2015 in Baden-Württemberg. Based on our findings we counter a common binary of substantive and symbolic uses of policies and argue that these are often combined and entangled. Furthermore, the results of this study underscore that policy-making on immigrant integration is not reserved for municipalities and national governments and adds that the regional level plays a role too.

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移民融合中实质政治与象征政治的纠缠:来自德国一个地区国家的见解

在讨论移民融合的治理问题时，研究人员和政策制定者在将国家政府视为决定移民融合的因素或将地方层面视为在这一政策制定领域具有强大影响力的因素之间进行了反复讨论。本文的重点是区域层面，而这一点迄今为止经常被排除在外。基于在德国巴登-符腾堡州社会事务和融合部的广泛实地调查，我们研究了在漫长的移民夏季之后，巴登-符腾堡州移民融合政策的特征。我们的研究结果表明，整合政策的象征性使用与实质性使用相结合具有针对性。我们从区域层面的作用增强、移民融合的内在象征特征以及2015年后巴登-符腾堡州反移民政治的复苏等方面来理解这些发现。根据我们的研究结果，我们反驳了政策的实质性和象征性使用的常见二元性，并认为这些通常是组合和纠缠的。此外，本研究的结果强调，有关移民融合的决策不仅限于市政当局和国家政府，而且还补充说，地区层面也发挥了作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Policy Studies PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION-

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

4.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： These changes at the structural level of the global system have impacted upon the work of public organizations either directly or indirectly and have broadened the field of action in policy studies. It has five main areas of intellectual interest: 1.To broaden the lens of policy analysis through the publication of research which locates policy-making within a theoretical, historical or comparative perspective. 2.To widen the field of enquiry in policy analysis through the publication of research that examines policy issues in a British, comparative, international or global context. 3.To promote constructive debate on theoretical, methodological and empirical issues in policy analysis.