The battleground of asylum and immigration policies : a conceptual inquiry

Scholarship has sought to develop theoretical frameworks to set order on the
rather muddled web of actors, interactions and tensions involved in asylum
and immigration policies. The article considers three of them: the “venue
shopping approach”, the “multi-level governance approach” and critical
humanitarian studies.
The purpose is to contribute to this debate by elaborating the concept of
“battleground” of asylum (and immigration) policies. With this concept, I
mean that they are a contentious field in which different actors interact,
cooperating or conflicting. Different levels of public responsibility are
involved but also non-public actors play a role. They encompass various promigrant
supporters but also xenophobic movements. The article will analyse
the crucial actors involved, with a focus on the local level: pro-refugee civil
society; coalitions of diverse pro-refugee actors; opponents to refugee
reception; local governments acting for and against refugee and migrant
reception and asylum seekers and irregular immigrants themselves.