Interim Policy Proposal
1. Present
lack of information feedback mechanism
2. Proposal for
the contract on the exchange of information.
3. Trust as the
basis of the community of experts
4. Intermediation
in the trust-based community
5. Barriers to the
development
6. Empirical investigation
7. Conclusions
1. Present lack of information feedback mechanism
Migration is a complex issue and
requires gathering information from many sources.
Here migration management will be
understood as management of the network of policymakers with information
resources; therefore, approaches used will be those of policy networks,
information management and interorganizational communication. For migration
to be managed comprehensively, timely and accurate information on direction,
volume and distribution of 'traffic' flows is needed.
Migration is managed successfully
when migrants are handled in the way which uses the resources assigned
to the task by the receiving and transit country most effectively.
For this to happen, predictable and stable information of two kinds is
needed. First, procedures and institutions for admission and integration,
including access to the welfare state, communicate to migrants the demand
of recipient countries. On the other hand, information on the population
of expected migrants is analogous to the supply of labor. While the
first kind of information is concentrated, stable and public, the other
is dispersed, volatile and tacit. Governments and intergovernmental
organizations generate the explicit demand information, while non-governmental
organizations are best equipped to gather the tacit information.
While much has been written about the rules and regulations in migration
regimes, there is a gap in drafting policies for eliciting the tacit information
about incoming migration flows.
At the time when the European Commission
is on its way toward having the exclusive right of initiative on migration
matters under Title IV of Treaty of Amsterdam, thus further enlarging the
distance between the policy-makers and their clients, the need for verification
of adequacy of the European migration regimes is all the clearer.
The most resource-efficient way to achieve this is to create an information
marketplace and provide incentives for feedback of supply information to
control the level of demand.
Migration is commonly perceived
as a matter of national security. The traditional manner in which
migration standards are developed involves closed-door talks between Ministry
of Interior and Border Guard officials. Information is strategic,
access is rationed on the basis of formal lines of authority, and revealed
only when necessary. Few policy-makers are involved in formulating
the rules, and the latter are rather inflexible as is the case in issues
where security is at stake.
However, application of strict rules
and rigid institutions is made difficult by the very different nature of
the task. Migratory flows test the appropriateness of chosen solutions,
for instance when there are too few border crossing points, there is shortage
of interpreters, or if on the one hand, there are not enough places to
integrate the migrants into, or conversely, the migrants are shifted from
places with higher capacity to absorb to those with lower capacity.
A case in point is the chain of
readmission agreements through which the wealthier West European states
shift the responsibility for review of application for asylum on to the
poorer transit states of Central and Eastern Europe. Thanks to the
predominantly reactive solutions like this migrants often find themselves
stranded in communities which do not want to integrate them or into which
they themselves want to be absorbed. Many of them choose to continue
to flee from the procedures initiated in the states on which the responsibility
fell back to the states which refused to consider their application.
Political culture dictates two solutions
to the information deficit, both of which suffer from occasional feedback.
Authoritarian states may continue with a military type of management, which
can override conflicts with local interests, and due to the dominant role
of the state in the economy, can muster large resources in case of a larger
inflow of migrants. The system is crude and simple, for it easily
can keep the migrants out, or by resort to discretionary power of the leader,
allow their influx for ideological reasons. In case of such an arbitrary
admission, there is no need for use of extensive procedures. Also,
to maintain the monopoly on power, the policy-makers do not welcome feedback
information from other centers of power, including the media.
In liberal democratic societies,
migration remains a matter of technocratic governance, but it requires
feedback since the media publicize the cases of policy failure. However,
these interventions are on a case-by-case basis and the policy responses
are reactive. Media coverage of events of failure are not based
on a comprehensive body of knowledge about the extent of migratory flows,
nor are they informed about available policy options. Thus, the officials
tend to take a defensive stance.
What officials do need to frame
the institutions so as to make them more responsive is to have a reliable
dynamic picture of expected flows so as to redistribute the demand for
integration services. The knowledge they seek is dispersed and is
best acquired while the migrant is still in transit, thus cannot by definition
be procured by the government agencies of the prospective recipient country.
However, tracking of migrant populations
is rarely performed in transit countries, since the local organizations
find few incentives to do so. First, due to lack of credible burden-sharing,
transit-country governments fear that by indicating the real numbers
of migrants on their territory, they will give away the data, which then
will be used to send these migrants from the borders of the prospective
recipient country back to the transit country. Second, it is a costly
and logistically difficult activity, which the less-developed transit countries
can ill afford. Finally, there is a lack of a mechanism for the communication.
The rest of the paper will propose a solution, which will draw on resources
of intergovernmental organizations, representing usually the recipient
countries, and local nongovernmental organizations from transit countries.
2. Proposal for the contract on the exchange of information.
A marketplace for feedback information
on migration flows needs to be set up. First, participants need to
be identified with their incentives for exchange, and then the contract
conditions at which the participants will agree to continue cooperation,
specifying exact products and forms of payment. In general terms,
intergovernmental organizations need the verification of their initial
estimates for long-term policies and dynamic early notification of changes
in the volumes or distribution of the flows of migrants. Non-governmental
organizations need the stability of procedures and frameworks of the IGOs
on which they can base their strategies, which often take the form of implementation
programs. Such frameworks are expressed in the rules of engagement
with partner organizations, covering such practicalities as accounting
and project management stipulations.
However, strictly formal criteria
of organizational compatibility, which work for contracts on the transfer
of explicit knowledge, where data are discrete and concept-based, thus
presentable in formal reports, are not sufficient to conclude a contract
on the transfer of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is drawn from
empirical cases, yielding a picture, which is perennially incomplete and
vulnerable to revision. To be a useful corrective to the solid
categories used by the IGOs, it must not be categorized at the stage of
collection. Therefore, a contract needs to be drawn, which would
respect the integrity of the tacit data. Payment needs to be made
for the process of transfer of knowledge, rather than for discrete bits
of information.
The danger, however, is that if
present rules of engagement between IGOs and NGOs are left in place then
the NGOs will be still paid to produce reports constructed around the categories,
which their clients have come up with. Such concepts are deduced
from the client organization's mission statement, which, in turn, is derived
from the political will of their stakeholders. The feedback mechanism
would not provide a corrective to the missions then, and the organizations
themselves would lack a proper tool for organizational learning.
Organizational learning is made
difficult inside the hierarchies of governmental and intergovernmental
organizations, since the employees find few opportunities for exit to another
competitive organization. Intergovernmental organizations (such as
International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees) have developed strong positions in their niche markets.
This is not so among non-governmental organizations, where short-term employment
by project or voluntary activity reduces barriers to exit, while a more
horizontal structure allows voicing the dissent. Thus, NGO labor
market is more dynamic, offering hope for better utilization of tacit knowledge
of employees.
3. Trust as the basis of the community of experts
The contract would create conditions
for long-term cooperation between nongovernmental providers of local knowledge
and intergovernmental donors of standards and finance. It would give
assurances to both parties toward fulfillment of their needs. Every
intergovernmental organization would express their expectations of NGOs
to abide by the tenets expressed in the donor's mission statement, and
would indicate the requirements regarding the use of resources. Thanks
to the use of standardized forms of contract and the stress on repeat deals,
NGOs would become quickly socialized into the framework of formal norms
of partnership with IGOs. Once the specialized interests and competencies
of different agencies are known, NGOs can pick those whose requirements
are acceptable to them. Similarly, the track record of consecutive
projects with one or many IGOs creates a 'CV' for the NGO, including its
area of technical expertise and a list of transferrable skills. Long-term
cooperation would induce NGOs to seek brands for themselves, and adopting
either a niche or low-cost strategy, which would be indicated by its pattern
of diversification of clients.
Building up of transparent rules
of the game and division of labor would provide incentives for competition
between NGOs; however, by empowering them through the creation of track
records, it would tilt the balance of power away from the cash-rich and
standard-imposing IGOs. The more fundamental novelty would be, however,
the identification of assets which make NGOs indispensable to IGOs. Non-governmental
organizations are flexible enough as well as embedded deep enough in the
local communities to be able to collect and interpret the tacit knowledge.
To make use of this type of knowledge, which is dependent on the
person's experience, on a steady basis, one needs to price it and then
channel and process it. A method for verification is needed.
Tacit knowledge accumulates over
time, and it needs to be seen against its context. Hence it needs
to be maintained in a form of a database, which would file the continuous
record of the research organization's perceptions of the situation.
Since such knowledge forms the capital of the nongovernmental organization,
it can be shared only to a trusted party, which would invest in a long-term
relationship.
Interorganizational trust can be
built from a mutual commitment to share information resources--for the
NGO, to have access to the database of coded relevant practices worldwide,
kept by the IGO, and for the IGO, to add records of the NGO's practice
to its general database. The key to eliciting the knowledge from
the small partner organization lies in assurances about limited rights
of access and coding the source through a standardized system.
4. Intermediation in the trust-based community
Admittedly, the power gap between
IGOs and NGOs is still huge, especially in developing and transition countries.
If some NGOs are not outright created and sustained for purposes of the
IGO, many are formed in response to a certain funding activity, and remain
in place only as long as the activity is supported by the IGO. Also,
IGOs might want to limit the opportunities for cooperation of their partners
with some other IGOs, which remain competitive. Such a client-dominated
market requires aggregation of NGO interests. NGO networks and such
intermediary organizations as foundations may offer guarantees of fair
treatment through group bargaining in exchange for some services to the
IGOs, such as development of grassroots professional standards among NGOs
and membership certification for the trustworthy organizations.
NGO networks are also likely to
aggregate member organizations across the institutional and conceptual
divisions imposed by the clients. Typical are the distinctions made
according to the region, target client group, and functional specialization:
primarily, the geographic divisions bring together Central and West European
organizations, while leaving out the CIS organizations. Target groups
include refugees and mainstream (usually economic) migrants. NGOs
may also be classified as service delivery organizations, lobbies, or think
tanks. Transnational multifunctional NGO groupings are of particular
value when large migration management projects are at stake, involving
several clients. Their task might extend to drafting projects or
even suggesting major policy alternatives to multilateral solutions applied.
Their success in having their agenda placed on the table of major conferences
and intergovernmental institutions stems from two factors: the presentation
of the right mix of skills and knowledge and the capital of trust with
the IGOs, which has been accumulated through the web of contracts of individual
NGOs.
Intermediation is of particular
value for those NGOs which operate, for instance, in the CIS environment
with high levels of official corruption and arbitrariness. NGO networks
are likely to enter the area far ahead of the IGOs and build the skills
of local NGOs up to the level acceptable to prospective clients.
In some cases (e.g. Belarus) trust levels are so low that the NGO networks
are called in to support the third sector there directly with finances
and expertise. Of great importance is the role of NGO networks in
bringing down geography-based institutional divisions, thus asking IGOs
to reconsider the salience of boundaries. Where organizational cultures
are growing apart, such as in the Central and Southeastern Europe, NGO
networks are well-positioned to offer fora for translation of cultural
codes to reveal the equivalents of skills and knowledge-generation codes.
5. Barriers to the development
The successful development of the
exchange of information rests on two important assumptions. First,
the individual participants in the NGO network should share a similar vision
of the migratory environment and not be averse to the cooperation with
intergovernmental organizations. Such a shared vision is, first of
all, the matter of the local political culture and the prevailing level
of trust toward IGOs. Consequently, socialization in the course of
long-term cooperation with IGOs should help develop such a vision and decrease
the transaction costs of interaction. Second, there should be no
major conflicts of interest between the client IGO organizations, which
would prevent an NGO from working with both of them in succession.
Such conflicts do prevail between organizations on border-control and security
aspects of migration and asylum and human rights bodies.
Two factors need to be taken into
account while assessing how serious is the challenge to creation of a comprehensive
migration management program. The transfer of the initiative to the
European Commission is likely to put pressure on intergovernmental organizations
to seek consensus, as the Commission remains the dominant donor as well
as agenda-setter for the IGOs both in the areas of migration and asylum.
The latest revision of the Treaties, which brings both asylum and migration
affairs under one heading of the "area of freedom, security, and justice",
and incorporates the Schengen Agreement into the acquis communautaire,
is a powerful incentive to conceptualize once-separate issues of asylum
and labor migration under one heading of migration policy for the Union.
On the other hand, the IGOs reinforce the Commission's geographic division
f the Central and Eastern European migratory area into the clubs of insiders
and outsiders. While Central European states are participating
in intensive capacity-building programs in both migration control and asylum
procedures, due to the push for the rapid completion of accession negotiations,
the CIS and Southeast European countries are enmeshed in this institutional
framework to a much smaller degree. NGO sectors are weaker in these
areas from the start, and fewer chances for socialization in the adoption
of complex solutions to the migration and asylum may further increase the
cognitive distance and thus decrease the incentives for policy transfer.
A welcome correction would be to encourage bilateral or multilateral exchanges
of policy solutions between the countries within circles of closer and
farther integration (so-called fast-track and second-wave applicant countries,
and the countries of the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine).
The possible barriers to the development
of a transnational comprehensive migration management network will
be tested through two research questions: first, what are the conditions
for creation of a single platform for contact with NGOs among intergovernmental
organizations concerned with asylum (e.g. Office of United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees) and migration (International Labor Organization,
International Organization for Migration, International Conference for
Migration Policy Development). Second, what mechanisms will facilitate
the policy transfer across the emerging Schengen divide between the NGOs
in accession and non-accession countries.
To answer the first question, the
organizations' manuals for cooperation with NGOs will be scanned for the
needs of the IGOs for information and expertise. Next, the NGO Liaison
Officers will be interviewed to assess their degree of freedom to interpret
the written precepts. Finally, the initiatives on capacity-building
among NGOs will be sought out to identify the needs as practiced.
These needs can then be articulated better in a broader forum of the NGO
Liaison Officers from all the organizations under study to draw conclusions
on the actual division of labor.
With regard to the second question,
an analysis of policy learning with the use of NGO networks can be fruitful.
I chose to study the transfer of solutions and occassional knowledge-sharing
between Austria and Hungary, and Poland and Ukraine with an eye to the
possible learning between Hungary and Ukraine. Initial conclusions
seem to indicate that NGO networks are playing a more prominent role in
the situations where the governmental capacity is low, and governments
are participating in fora of exchange to a smaller degree. Consequently,
Austrian-Hungarian policy transfer was largely conducted through direct
contacts of government officials (in the framework of ICMPD and Budapest
Process, for instance), the European Commission and the UNHCR pressures
for legal reform and more vigorous implementation. The media did
play its role, but it was limited to reactions to gruesome conditions in
Hungarian migrant detention centers.
On the other hand, Ukrainian-Polish
relations officially sagged on the question of Poland's accession to Schengen
and imposition of visas on Ukrainians. The Commission and UNHCR place
Ukraine in the CIS grouping, while Poland enjoys some of the highest levels
of investment in the region (primarily from Germany) in border-control
infrastructure. Therefore, the crucial role that the Polish NGO sector
plays in delivering Western funds and expertise to the Ukrainian counterpart
is all the more prominent against the background of obstacles to interstate
cooperation.
Creation of a body of procedures
for gathering, verifying and sharing feedback information on expected supply
of migrants presents several improvements over the present scenario.
Agreement on common standards of procedure for projects in migration and
asylum across institutional divisions will expand funding opportunities
for comprehensive migration management programs. Transparency of
projects and creation of an expert contact database will provide incentives
for the overburdened government agencies to outsource some of their projects
financed by the European Commission. Finally, the comprehensive picture
of migratory pressures will place asylum in the right perspective, taking
off the stigma that asylum systems are predominantly abused. Hopefully,
a coalition of experts will emerge, offering a set of feasible policy options
and assuring crucial involvement of civil society in the supranational
policy making