Abstract
Immigration policies in Europe, since the late 1980s and the early 1990s, have become
increasingly politicised, challenging, for example, attempts to recruit migrant labour and
placing more and more emphasis on demands for immigrants to adhere to cultural, social
and legal norms of the host societies. Despite these developments, however, the situation in
Europe remains rather puzzling: besides the adverse political climate, certain European
countries have experienced remarkable progress in promoting the integration of newcomers
from non-EU member states. In order to explain the dynamics behind integration policy
formation in Europe, we consider it necessary to move beyond a conceptualisation that is
restricted to national politics.We link this observation to the structural changes in Europe’s
emerging system of multi-level governance, which has empowered sub-national levels of
governance in their efforts to design and implement integration policies. Employing a
political opportunity structure model, we hypothesise that the diversity of these dynamics
(i.e. competition between parties and interaction with organisations within civil society)
may produce different policies than those at the national level. Our argument is based on a
comparative case study of Emilia-Romagna in Italy and North Rhine-Westphalia in
Germany.
