Short description:

This book provides a comparative overview of asylum seekers? reception throughout Europe by adopting a theoretical framework based on an analytical approach to the notion of multilevel governance.

Long description:

This book provides a comparative overview of asylum seekers? reception throughout Europe by adopting a theoretical framework based on an analytical approach to the notion of multilevel governance (MLG).

It challenges the tendency of the MLG literature to overlook political controversies and conflicts and questions the assumption that it represents the best policymaking arrangement for promoting policy convergence. In doing so, it explores the functioning of the reception component of the Common European Asylum System in centralised states and federal/regional states and analyses its implementation at both national and local levels. The book reveals the heterogeneous development of reception policies not only across Member States but also within each country where solutions adopted at the local level generally diverge substantially. Furthermore, the overall centralisation of policy-making on reception regardless the institutional structure, seems to leave little room for MLG arrangements tailored to specific localities and triggers tensions between central governments and local authorities.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of migration and asylum studies, immigration, (multilevel) global governance and more broadly to comparative politics, European studies/politics and public policy.

Chapter 3, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: An analytical approach to the multilevel governance of asylum seekers? reception policies  2. Making sense of EU reception policies in the midst of the crisis: The Partnership for the Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees as a case of multilevel governance policy-making  3. Reforms of asylum seekers? reception during the 2010s: Driving factors and multilevel governance arrangements  4. Multilevel policy-making of refugee reception policies in Spain  5. The variance in multilevel governance of asylum seekers? reception in Italy: The key roles of policy legacy, politics and civil society  6. The multilevel governance of asylum seekers? reception in Germany and the role of the local level: A local?to?local comparison  7. The gradual emergence of a Greek reception system amidst multiple "crises"  8. The Finnish reception system and a local perspective on integration  9. Multilevel governance of the "refugee crisis" in Germany: A chronological analysis of governance approaches and implementation outcomes  10. Conclusion: Multilevel governance between centralisation and local agency