The Political Implications of Scientific Knowledge. EU Funded Policy Research and Immigration Policies in Italy E-Book

Marco Boschele

• Herausgeber: goWare
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The work endeavours to assess the impact of EU funded research on both, social science policy research and the policy making process at national level. Attempts, in the past, to include the social sciences in the decision making process have raised questions about the validity of scientific knowledge, in terms of its objectivity, and in terms of its legitimizing element. The starting point of this investigation, therefore, is the relationship between research and policy making. Subsequently, it considers the development of social science research in the field of immigration. At EU level it analyses the changes in the dynamics of migration and how the EU research Framework Programmes have responded. At national level it seeks to place the concept of citizenship and nationality law within the tradition of the social sciences in Italy and to understand how social science research has contributed to the development of policies. The investigation also analyses the research policy approach at institutional level in Italy and the involvement of Italian universities and organizations in the FP6 and FP7 to determine if there takes place an internationalization/Europeanization of social science research on immigration and/or the construction of a ‘non-national discourse’. There is a formation of a discourse in the field of immigration research which follows the Commission directives but due to the Italian policy making process closed to academic and experts influence this discourse does not permeate the process of immigration policies making.

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright Page

Description

Introduction

1. The correlation between the social sciences and the state

The validity of scientific knowledge in the philosophy of the social sciences: Popper and Kuhn

Models of analysis of the relation between knowledge and policy

2. The ‘European paradox’ as the basis for the ‘knowledge society’ and the expanded role of the social sciences at EU level

The Production of ‘Relevant’ Knowledge

The new contract between science and society

The making of the knowledge society at EU level and the inclusion of the social sciences in the Framework Programmes

3. New understandings of migration mobility and EU level migration policies

Traditional migration studies and transnationalism: state and supra-national levels

EU immigration policies

Immigration and the implications on citizenship and sovereignty: the national and the EU level

4. The Italian case: the making of immigration and nationality law policies and the role of social science research

Italian social sciences in the tradition of Machiavelli

The tradition of citizenship and nationality law in Italy

The European model of immigration policies in Italy

Immigration research and theoretical approaches in Italy

The making of Italian immigration policies: which role for research?

5. Research policy in Italy and the Italian participation in the FP6 and the FP7 immigration research

EU funded research impact on Italian research policy

Italian participation in framework programmes 6th and 7th: research on immigration

Conclusion

References

Abbreviations

List of Names and Places

Description

The work endeavours to assess the impact of EU funded research on both, social science policy research and the policy making process at national level. Attempts, in the past, to include the social sciences in the decision making process have raised questions about the validity of scientific knowledge, in terms of its objectivity, and in terms of its legitimizing element.

The starting point of this investigation, therefore, is the relationship between research and policy making. Subsequently, it considers the development of social science research in the field of immigration. At EU level it analyses the changes in the dynamics of migration and how the EU research Framework Programmes have responded. At national level it seeks to place the concept of citizenship and nationality law within the tradition of the social sciences in Italy and to understand how social science research has contributed to the development of policies.

The investigation also analyses the research policy approach at institutional level in Italy and the involvement of Italian universities and organizations in the FP6 and FP7 to determine if there takes place an internationalization/Europeanization of social science research on immigration and/or the construction of a ‘non-national discourse’.

There is a formation of a discourse in the field of immigration research which follows the Commission directives but due to the Italian policy making process closed to academic and experts influence this discourse does not permeate the process of immigration policies making.

. . .

Marco Boschele is from Trento and he received a BA in Politics with a Minor in Political Philosophy and a MA in Political Philosophy from the University of East London. His MA thesis discussed, through the thinking of Lyotard and Rawls, the postmodern and modern concept of justice in an international context. In 2004 he moved to Istanbul and he undertook a PhD program at the Marmara University in the European Union Institute. The doctoral thesis explored the influence of EU funded research, in the sphere of the social sciences, at national level. The field of research was immigration and the case study was Italy. His research interests are within the sphere of political philosophy with particular focus on what legitimises political power in an age of the crisis of political legitimacy of the national state. He currently teaches political science at Kocaeli University.

Introduction

In recent years, Europe has increasingly become the destination of continuous and substantial migratory flows. This has both challenged the borders of the European Union and exposed the inability of EU policies to deal with vulnerable groups such as low-skilled workers and women, but it has also shown the inability of the EU to deal with refugee crises. As such, recent migrations, caused by instability in the countries of origin, such as wars and regime change, have reinforced populist inward-looking political movements across Europe. These arose as a result of austerity measures promoted by the EU Commission to tackle the financial crises which begun in 2007. In fact, the number of Europeans voting for populist parties, from the right and the left in national election, has increased from 7% to more than 25% in the last 30 years[1].

These parties and political movements are now promising and promoting restrictive policies, such as trade protectionism and securitization policies, and are strongly criticising the EU and its institutions. For instance, the main argument of the “leave” campaign in the Brexit referendum, in 2016 in the UK, was based on the fear of immigration, particularly it was on the apprehension that Turkey would become an EU member. In France, Marine Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential elections in 2017 by confronting minorities and promising isolationist policies such as leaving the EU, but at the same time forming alliances with Putin and Trump. In Italy, the impact of the 2015 refugee crisis, resulted in the anti-establishment M5S (Five Star Movement) coming to power in 2018, in a coalition with the right, anti-immigration League led by Matteo Salvini[2]. As a result, Italy temporarily closed its ports to NGOs boats in the process of rescuing migrants at sea and blamed the inability of the EU institutions to deal with migration from Africa to Italy via the Mediterranean, the biggest gateway to Europe.

These political manifestations across Europe have exposed the challenges that the nation state, in terms of its sovereignty and territoriality, throws at the very existence of the EU. From the perspective of the state and its relationship with scientific knowledge, this study seeks to determine to which extent policy research[3] in the field migration is Europeanized, therefore, eroding the sovereignty of the nation state. This is based on the assumption that scientific knowledge contributes to legitimise political decisions. As such, the empowering of the social sciences, through funding, is an attempt to create an intellectual matter that complements an economic and a political space, which results, given the novelty of the endeavour, will manifest later in the future[4].

It can be argued that this can have different consequences on the way the nation state usually approaches questions such as immigration, security and environmental issues. The endeavour to promote and support transdisciplinary dialogues may affect the sovereignty of the nation state and its relationship with scientific knowledge. If the delineation of the field of science from that of politics is protected by a supranational organization, it challenges the nation in favour of the supra-national level with a consequence on national sovereignty (Mallard, Paradeise and Peerbaye 2009:3)[5]. Scientists and social scientists will generate a kind of scientific knowledge, skills and capital to secure professional autonomy within or outside the nation. In addition, the attempt to produce a body of science policy at European level is a move towards the internationalization/Europeanization[6] of the social sciences.

Indeed, views differ about the applicability of policy research, which is generally considered a conservative approach. Some of these positions criticize the belief that research evidence can provide objective answers to policy questions, since evidence is not objective but related to the social context. Moreover, politics and the art of muddling through[7] undermine the attempt to introduce research evidence. On the other hand, social science researchers are aware of the limitation of descriptive and prescriptive knowledge and its impact and that research rarely provide definitive answers in solving social problems (Nutley 2003:3,4). This means that research must be considered for what it is and that it can contribute in some ways to understand social behaviour.

Issues, within policy research, are not only about the research enquiry, but also about the mode of research funding, research organization and its utilization. Nutley et al et al (2007:15) argue that the use of research is not considered only directly to make decisions, but also in the form of discourse (ideas, theories and concepts) to influence ‘thinking around policy problems’ or where research is used to support political arguments. One reason to assess social science research is that of evaluating if the policy-making is using social science research to support or challenge decision-making. Therefore, research can affect not only decisional choices, but also the formation of discourses, the formulation of new understandings and possibilities, and the level of public and professional discourse and debate. Understanding these narrow and different impacts, poses important conceptual, methodological and practical challenges.

Hence, the twofold implications of EU funded social science research, at academic and non-academic level, point out at least two main issues. The first issue is that science and the social sciences, in their period of crisis, in terms of their organization and institutionalisation and in terms of their objective validity, are employed to aid the policy making process at EU and at national level. The second issue is that investment at EU level implies that social science traditions operate at national level and that they differ from the envisioned approach of the EU Commission thus disagreeing with the idea of a European social science. According to Peter Wagner (2004), the idea of national social sciences originated in the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment. One can argue that knowledge rests in language and the latter defines the nation. In fact, Martin and Frost (1996) argue that there are numerous perspectives, which disagree on epistemology, methodology, political ideology and theory, adding that the severity of these intellectual differences makes it difficult to review the result of research impeding advances in knowledge.[8]

At EU level, the Lisbon Strategy 2000 set the objectives for innovation and competitiveness within the borders of the union. The idea of enclosure of the social sciences in the policy-making mechanism became concrete with the creation of the ERA (European Research Area) and the issuing of the White Paper on Governance in 2001. The Community Method was introduced to improve research framework and the Framework Programme was employed to promote greater science and technology collaboration and coordination. New understandings of society, as the result of the growing importance of information and the production and usage of knowledge in the 1990s, influenced the Commission approach. Relevant, within this context, are the theories which attempt to understand the transformations within contemporary societies which begun in the 1960s and 1970s. Although, the concept of the knowledge society was conceived at national level, in the Scandinavian and Northern European countries, such an approach was adopted by the commission for achieving the knowledge society by the first decade of the 2000s.

The focus on immigration research by the EU Commission is characterised by the establishment of the immigration policy at EU level and the increasing importance of the role of research in the sphere of migration. This is also related to the changes of the phenomenon itself, which can be partially associated with the process of globalization and the necessities of the knowledge economies for labour. Furthermore, traditional research, prevalently in the national framework, has been regarded inadequate to understand such dynamics. Therefore, within the EU, with the FP6 and continuing with FP7, funding of projects has sought to support new approaches, methodologies and conceptual tools to understand how migratory flows are developing. The aim has been that of bridging the gap between ‘deductive prediction’ and ‘what is to happen’, characteristic of the old methods of research in migration.[9] Meaning that research and policy making are not sufficiently interacting and that studies to understand migration rested on concepts which regarded migration as a natural consequence of economic and political inequalities (Faist 2004), and have concentrated on countries of destination rather than country of origins (Penninx 2006). To fill the previous shortcomings in migration research, it was pointed out that any approach to study and analyse the migration process should be multidisciplinary since migration research often involve different disciplines of the social sciences. In fact, the FP6 is one of the first attempts to address these issues and to deal with the fragmentation of national research.

EU migration policies were put back on the agenda in the Council of the European Union in 2005 following the incidents in Ceuta and Melilla.[10] The Commission and the Council of Ministers agreed a series of measures based on control, such as visa and borders regulations. Previously, measures such as cooperation with countries of origin or preventive measures such as fight against poverty, human rights abuses and condemnation of authoritarian regimes were introduced in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 and the Tampere conclusions of 1999 but after September the 11th and a conservative change in the Council of Ministers these measures were not adopted (Bendel 2007:32,33). Instead, after the Hague Programme, approved in 2004, policies focused on security and control, under the label of securitization.

It can be argued that, in line with the integrating character of the EU and its institutions, the inclusion of the social sciences and the humanities in the ERA is an attempt to achieve a greater economic, social and political integration. Moreover, it is envisaged that the disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities should also generate knowledge that can be applied in a non-commercial, societal setting. The EU is therefore proposing the revival of the social sciences in the process of policy making with the scope of coordinating over the space of the EU and in the immediate vicinity the promotion of cross collaboration.

Thus, in this book the intention is not only to investigate the relation between knowledge and politics. This work also considers EU funded research and attempts to understand its possible consequences on research and policy making at national level. Given the problematic of the relationship between knowledge and politics, to what extent do social science policy-oriented research aid the policy making process? What is the relation of immigration research between the EU level and the national level in Italy? Given the nature of policy-oriented research, what is the possible impact on national discourse and on the policy making process?

This raises further questions about issues related to the philosophy of the social sciences and the broad question about the validity of scientific knowledge. If scientific knowledge has a legitimising element what can be the consequences at national level, particularly if knowledge is produced in the field of migration? Is the EU approach in the sphere of migration reflecting a particular tradition? In the specific Italian case study, will a body of scientific knowledge conceived at EU level affect the tradition at national level?

In relation to the interface between scientific knowledge and politics, Chapter 1 identifies two main areas. The first is the organization and development of the social sciences, particularly in their role to understand social problems, including the way they have been organized through the various disciplines (Wallerstein 1999, 2001) and their formation and institutionalization (Wagner 1991, 1999). The second, is about the theoretical problems which arose from the policy sciences of Harold Lasswell, here regarded as the modern expression of the institutionalised link between the social sciences and the policy making process. This rational approach has been criticised for its reliance on neo-positivist methods, and the problems of prediction, objectivity and politicization (DeHaven-Smith 1990; Brunner 1991; Fisher 1998, 2004; Pielke 2005). Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, in the discussion about the nature of science and the way scientific knowledge operates in the field of the social sciences, both agreed on the limits of the pure empirical approaches of positivism; however, the former is regarded as a forerunner of rational choice theory and the latter influenced social constructivism. Different approaches of policy analysis offer a way for critically understand the link between knowledge and politics and more specifically for evaluating the approach adopted by the EU Commission, where, it can be argued, knowledge is legitimised by politics.

The interface between social sciences and policy at EU level is analysed in Chapter 2. First it considers the theoretical developments which characterised the different interpretation of the role of knowledge and information (Bell 1976, Giddens 1994, Castells 2001, Lush 2002, Lundvall 1996) as well as the shift in the understanding of the production of knowledge (Gibbons 1994, Ziman 1994, Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1998). It is within this sphere that different understanding of society and research systems have emerged influencing the theoretical approaches behind the European Research Area and the Framework Programmes. As previously mentioned, ‘Society, The Endless Frontier’ laid the basis for the role of science and technology in the improvement of society and it marked a change from the previous linear mode approach.

The field of migration is chosen to analyse this approach. The increasing importance of the role of research in the sphere of migration is related to the changes of the phenomenon itself. In this respect, chapter 3 first describes the changes in the dynamics of migration and it describes how research has responded, particularly in the context of the FPs. Within the EU, with the FP6 and continuing with FP7, funding of projects has sought to support new approaches, methodologies and conceptual tools to understand how migration is developing. Secondly, it looks at how EU migration policy has developed in the context of these changes. Migration and citizenship have become an issue since the 1980 and before there was little connection between migration research and literature of nationality law, political theories and sociological analysis of citizenship (Bauböck 2006:9). The concepts of nationalism and transnationalism are approaches to understand migration, the latter being the approach of FP funded research. Subsequently, this chapter investigates the relationship between migration and citizenship and considers the effects of migration policies on existing conceptions of citizenship in the context of the EU.

With the intention to give a national dimension to this approach, Chapter 4 seeks to place the concept of citizenship and nationality law within the tradition of the social sciences in Italy and to understand how social science research in the field has contributed to the development of policies as the model indicated by the European Commission. This involves delineating, within the social sciences, the specificity of the Italian tradition as reflected in the concept of citizenship and nationality regime. Thereafter, it implies the scrutiny of the various nationality and immigration policies and the role of research within this process. At the outset, the social sciences are conceived as a universal set of systems to understand human behaviour, however, the way different societies understand themselves, are characterized by their contexts, which includes language, and the way knowledge is institutionalised (Genov 1989; Levine 1995; Wagner 2004). Therefore, in Europe different nations have developed, at least in their formation ages, their tradition based on the way they perceived themselves as nations and what it means to be part of a specific community.

Chapter 5 briefly looks at the research policy approach, at institutional level, in Italy and the involvement of Italian universities and organizations in the FP6 and FP7 in the sphere of immigration. The intention is to understand what is the approach for the use of social science knowledge in the policy making process and to deduce from Italy’s participation in the FP programs of the EU Commission, if there is a convergence with policies and an internationalization/Europeanization of social science research on immigration and the construction towards a ‘non-national discourse’. Against the immigration policies and policy proposals it is understood that in Italy there is continuity with a policy approach which has a national tradition and a discontinuity of research discourse in the sphere of immigration promoted by the EU Commission. The immigration issues which emerged from the projects covers different aspects of integration including civic and political participation, education, and the problematic of undocumented immigrants. The policy recommendations which sometimes are directed at a national case or formulated more in generic way point out the national trends of Italian immigration policies suggesting that EU migration research in Italy falls under the ‘paradigm challenging approach’.

The main arguments and findings of the book are discussed in the concluding chapter 6. This amount in the summary of the main findings but also to a broader discussion of the nature of the relationship between knowledge and politics and the method of knowledge production, and the relation to the policy mechanism employed by the EU Commission. The conclusions are that in the explicit policy oriented research, knowledge is legitimised by the political choice to fund it in order to support political decision. At EU level, where produced knowledge is not directly informing the policy process, it will be argued that such production of knowledge is a way to give legitimacy to the Commission itself in the field of immigration. This chapter also looks at the finding of the EU funded projects and reflect on research approaches and policy recommendations in the context of immigration policies and research in Italy. There is a formation of a discourse in the field of immigration research which follows the EU Commission preference but due to the Italian policy making process closed to academic and expert influence and more politically patronage dominated it remained to be seen if there will be any influence.

1The Guardian ‘How populism emerged as an electoral force in Europe’, 20 Nov 2018.

2The Guardian ‘How populism emerged as an electoral force in Europe’, 20 Nov 2018.

3Policy research refers to scientific research which has non-university groups as its main intended audience (although the results may in practice also interest academic audiences). For the most part such research attempts to apply social scientific findings to the solution of problems identified by a client (Gordon Marshal 1998).

4Etienne Balibar (2004), for instance, speaks of a “new citizenship in Europe, in the sense of an intellectual matter that needs to be developed in order to give body to a true ‘European public space’”.

5Mallard et al do not specifically mention the EU but hypothesize on the results of supra-national organizations funding scientific research including the social sciences.

6Understood as the impact of EU on its member states, consisting of ‘processes of construction, diffusion and institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles and shared beliefs and norms…. Consolidated in the EU policy and then incorporated in domestic policies’ (Bulmer and Radaelli 2004).

7Charles Lindblom ‘The Science of Muddling Through’ (1959), he made a distinction between a rational approach and the struggle of policy makers to get through bureaucracy.