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In Germany there is a rich and many-faceted academic tradition on immigrant integration, which goes back several decades. Initially, however, dialogues between researchers and policymakers were relatively scarce. This was largely because German policymakers did not consider the country to be a country of immigration. Consequently, they did not have a great interest in acquiring knowledge on immigrant integration, and certainly not at the federal level. This situation began to change in the 1990s, when Germany was faced with growing numbers of immigrants, largely as a consequence of the political changes in Europe. Academics were successful in mobilising public opinion and the media, and thus forced the government to reconsider the basis of its policies. Once the fact that Germany had become an immigration country had been publicly acknowledged, several new dialogue and consultancy structures were set up, which encouraged the use of research outcomes in policymaking. However, in all cases analysed in more detail in this chapter, the political primacy has remained over the use (or misuse) of the relevant research outcomes. This seems to be the case primarily at the federal level, and less so at the local level, where there is more room for mutual learning.

The Netherlands was one of the first countries in Europe to formulate a coordinated national policy on migrant integration, in the early 1980s. In the 2000s, it was again among the first to make a sharp assimilationist turn away from the multicultural model. Much of the extensive ethnic monitoring structure set up in the 1980s and 1990s still exists, but the positivist belief in the role of scientific research as a tool for societal engineering in this area has clearly declined. Formal research-policy dialogue structures have been largely dismantled, and dialogues that continue to exist have become strongly politicised and mediatised. Knowledge use has become more selective and largely instrumental, mainly dictated be the needs of politicians. The analysis in this chapter also suggests that the combined politicisation and mediatisation of research-policy dialogues on migrant integration may have created a new boundary, one between mediatised and non-mediatised research-policy dialogues. Consequently, the old boundary between the two worlds of research and policy may have lost some of its relevance. At the same time, the growing apart of policymakers and the academic world has also facilitated the development of a more varied, and therefore much richer research landscape.

Inspired by academic and political currents in North America, early research on migrant integration in the United Kingdom contributed to the development of a ‘race relations’ consensus, launching Britain on a trajectory quite distinct from subsequent approaches in neighbouring European countries. Since the 1970s, the diversity of discourse coalitions and actors involved in discussions of migrant integration policy has increased markedly. An interesting feature of the UK case has been policymakers’ long-standing preference for integration dialogues to take place in government-sponsored commissions. Developing the insight that independent commissions are an ideal venue to study science-society dialogues, the authors compare three commissions that reported in the 2000s: the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain in 2000 (CMEB); the Community Cohesion Review Team (CCRT) in 2001; and the Commission on Integration and Cohesion in 2007 (CIC).

Poland has one of the lowest rates of immigration of any EU member state; it is a country of emigration rather than of immigration, although this may change in the near future. This chapter analyses three kinds of related actors – NGOs, researchers and public authorities – and it also analyses the context of institutional transformation after the fall of communism. Europeanization has been a key factor in the development of research as well as policies regarding migration and integration in Poland. First of all, migration-related legislation in Poland was virtually absent before Poland joined the EU in 2004. Therefore, as a condition for accession, new legislation was developed in line with the demands of the EU , including institutions and instruments for implementation. Secondly, Europe is not only a source of funds and resources that fuels NGOs working with migrants in Poland, but it is also seen as a reference point for best practices and patterns of action in a society defined as ‘catching up’. Thirdly, research in the field has surged, stimulated by material support and ideational inspiration coming from old EU-countries.

Danish integration and immigration policies are among the most restrictive of their kind in Western Europe. More than in many other countries, integration is a highly contested policy domain and a salient policy issue. It is also one of the policy domains most subject to change over the last two decades. This raises the question of what has driven this development. This chapter argues that in Denmark the utilisation of external expert knowledge at the national level has been minimal. The research-policy relationship can perhaps best be considered as a ‘pick-and-choose’ model where politicians and policymakers have employed the research that supports the hegemonic policy-frame of integration and the dominant definition of problems. Research thereby serves a legitimising function rather than an instrumental one. This characterisation stands in contrast to the importance and emphasis that are usually given to evidence-based policymaking in the country. Subsequently, disenchantment about research-policy dialogues has occurred. While the use of external research arguably has been limited, there has, in contrast, been a proliferation of in-house research institutions within the political system itself, although often with limited budgets.

Unlike its individual member states, the EU is not responsible for migrant integration and does not possess or promote a particular migrant integration framework or paradigm. However, it does have a growing relevance to this field because of the development of its common migration and asylum policy, which includes certain provisions on migrant integration. As the EU does not have a strong legal basis for action in this area, its role lies more in the gathering and exchange of knowledge, the sharing of ideas, and the monitoring of practices. This chapter assesses both the structures of knowledge production and the utilisation of knowledge, while it also looks at dialogue structures that mediate the relationship between these two. It analyses a number of examples of such structures, and concludes that the production and utilisation of knowledge often goes beyond a purely instrumental use. The European Commission tends to use the knowledge it generates to develop a greater role for the EU, and to legitimate that role as an actor in this policy area. Unlike what has been observed in practically all national case studies, knowledge use at the EU level can be seen as a form of institutional legitimation. There is little evidence, however, that EU action has spilled over into wider public debate so far.

This concluding chapter compares forms of research-policy dialogues on migrant integration in the seven European countries included in this book as well as at the level of the EU. It analyses how knowledge for these dialogues is being produced and how policymakers make use of it. This comparative analysis is guided by the question how the politicisation of the issue, which has become visible all over Europe now, has impacted on the development of such dialogues, on the use of knowledge in policymaking and on the production of knowledge for policy purposes. A key conclusion of this book is that research-policy dialogue structures are increasingly diverse in form, and do not follow any uniform or converging pattern. There is, however, a clear tendency among policymakers to use knowledge more symbolically than instrumentally. This means that knowledge serves more often to substantiate policy arguments and to legitimize policy actors rather than for the direct development of policies and their instrumentalisation. Also, knowledge production tends to become more diversified under politicised conditions.