DoMiCoP – Diffusion of Migration Control Practice
Like climate change, migration is a global issue that is addressed both locally and internationally, therefore triggering cross-national learning and policy diffusion that DoMiCoP studies by reversing the focus from classical policy design and discourses to the understudied policy implementation. Organizations that put policies into practice find themselves in the position of deciding on matters that were not solved or were impossible to solve at the level of policy design. As a result, much policy-making is left in the remit of implementers most notably in the domain of migration control in the European Union. Organization theorists, theorists of learning, and implementation studies put forward that individuals learn in action and interaction the specialized expertise that allows them to carry out their tasks. DoMiCoP investigates the development and uses of the knowledge about how to put policy into action that take shape in interaction within ‘communities of practice’ and result in the diffusion of policy practice. Unlike the nexus between expert knowledge, epistemic communities and policy formulation, the nexus between everyday knowledge, communities of practice and policy implementation has not yet received systematic scholarly attention.
DoMiCoP’s aim is threefold:
1) Identifying venues at intermediate levels in which communities of practice take shape.
2) Analysing the communities of practice by focusing on the configurations of actors and organizations involved, the motivations underlying their involvement, the process of knowledge development in interaction, the conflicts and negotiations.
3) Revealing the role of non-state organizations (private for profit and not-for-profit).
DoMiCoP adopts a transnational comparative approach. It looks at processes of interaction that move the analytical focus from the limits to the dynamics of change in policy practice. It builds on field-based methodologies most notably participant observation and interviews, to collect original data on how and why actors make sense of problems and solutions related to policy implementation.
DoMiCoP expands the state of knowledge about ‘invisible’ venues of policy-making, fosters the understandings about the worlds of practice, and provides views from within of what happens on the ground.
Its findings could be employed to support efforts at making migration policies more effective as well as making sense of so-called gaps between goals and outcomes.
MPC researcher associated with this project:
Federica Infantino
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 895716
