Migration Control in Practice. Before and Within the Borders of the State. Edited by Federica Infantino and Djordje Sredanovic.

Abstract

Inspired by Lipsky’s (1980) ground-breaking monograph on the dilemmas faced by street-level bureaucrats in public services, the street-level approach to exploring the workings of states and administrative services has since gained momentum across various research fields. Its increasing popularity can be explained by researchers’ interest in studying the actual implementation of policies on the ground, and because it enables scholars to grasp how policies affect street-level workers (and vice versa) in an often networked surrounding, characterized by power and knowledge hierarchies. This perspective encourages academics to study the discretionary decision-making practices of so-called frontline workers, and the impacts of this on the populations with which they have direct contact. More recently, the street-level approach has expanded beyond state-employed ‘street-level bureaucrats’, such as teachers and police officers, and underlined that frontline (or street-level) workers in private and non-governmental spaces also play a vital role in the implementation of policies, particularly in the context of the outsourcing of formerly state-governed services to private contractors, such as the provision of asylum accommodation and legal counselling to non-citizens.