Politicization and expertise: Changing research-policy dialogues on migrant integration in Europe

Abstract

Department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam 3000DR,The Netherlands*Corresponding author. Email p.w.a.scholten@fsw.eur.nl.Intractable policy controversies like migrant integration often involve a high level of politicization.This paper looks specifically at how and why politicization changes research–policy dialogues,involving both the structure of these dialogues and how they affect policy-making and knowledgeproduction. Migrant integration policy (in five EU countries and at EU level) is taken as a casestudy. Bringing together theories on knowledge utilization, knowledge production and the structureof research–policy relations (dialogue structures), our analysis shows that a process of ‘politiciza-tion of science’ goes hand in hand with a process of ‘scientification of politics’. Research–policydialogues continue in the context of politicization, but in a fundamentally different way. Differentsorts of institutional dialogues between research and policy emerge that do justice to politicalprimacy, knowledge utilization becomes more symbolic but not less important, and knowledgeproduction tends to become more fragmented in the context of politicization.Keywords: politicization; knowledge utilization; knowledge production; dialogue structures;policy; migrant integration.