Suchergebnisse

AbstractImmigration politics in Britain have been transformed by high levels of immigration, the effects of EU free movement, strong anti‐immigration sentiment and UKIP's rise. All are compounded by a more general discontent with politics and politicians. In face of claims that something must be done, politicians seek tougher controls on immigration and free movement, but these may be difficult to attain because of entanglement with EU rules, while failure to achieve stated objectives can further compound the disconnect that fuels support for UKIP.

This paper analyses relationships between research and policy at European Union (EU) level about international migration by drawing from the perspectives of migration policy practitioners and their practices. By practitioners is meant those who seek to influence, shape or make migration policy at EU level including officials from EU institutions, national officials, academic researchers and representatives of international organisations, think tanks and NGOs. By practice is meant the socially recognised competence of practitioners. A particular focus is on the relationship between research and policy, or put another way, between the production of knowledge about international migration and the use of this knowledge in policy-shaping and policy-making. Questions include: how are relationships structured between researchers and policy-makers at EU level? How do policy-makers gather and process information? Is there risk of information overload and, if there is, how does this affect the relationship between researchers and policy-makers? Do policy-makers actually listen to researchers? If they do, what do they want to hear? And, do they actually hear it? Is there evidence that research has contributed to the development of shared understandings at EU level? If so, do these confirm or challenge existing policy orientations?

1\. Introduction 5 2\. Diffusion and Convergence 5 3\. The Development of EU Migration Governance 8 3.1 Institutional Development 8 3.2 Policy Development 9 4\. The Drivers of Diffusion 11 5\. Elite Consensus and the Transgovernmental Migration Governance 13 6\. The European Migration Network as a Community of Practice 16 7\. Conclusions 19 References 20 ; This paper explores the role played by the production and use of knowledge about international migration – or to be more specific the incompleteness of such knowledge –in driving new forms of EU migration governance. The focus is on the transformation of modes of governance linked to the roles played by instrumental, social and communicative logics of institutional action. The paper shows that, while the key referent for migration governance in Europe remains the state and associated state-centered logics of control, it is now evident that both the understanding of the issues and the pursuit of policy objectives are clearly shaped by the EU. A key reason for this is the role played by uncertainty related not only to the causes and effects of international migration, but also about the actual numbers of international migrants living both regularly and irregularly in EU member states. In contrast to existing approaches that see uncertainty and incomplete knowledge as causes of policy failure, this paper sees uncertainty and incomplete knowledge as creating social and political opportunities for EU action linked to the quest for more and 'better' knowledge with resultant conceptual and practical space for 'transgovernmental' relations among government units working across borders.

Includes abstract. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; In October 2011, the war in Afghanistan reached its ignominious ten year anniversary. As the conflict rolls on relentlessly, observers from across all disciplines, and indeed the general public themselves, have attempted to identify why the intervention, which began as Operation Enduring Freedom, has instead become an 'Enduring Nightmare'. This dissertation attempts to provide empirical reasoning to this question by means of a literature review of the established strategic critiques of the intervention between the years of October 2001 and October 2008.