‘Fortune-Hunter’ or ‘Future Citizen’?
Bottom-up attempts for alternative asylum reception policy by the local governments of Boxtel, Heusden and Utrecht
Tom Kieft
Master Political Science. Track Management and Policy Supervisor: Jeroen Doomernik Second reader: Sander van Haperen Student number: 10003799 Email address: [email protected] Submission date: June 24th, 2016
Contents Abstract ...... 3 Introduction ...... 4 The differences between an asylum seeker and a refugee ...... 6 Literature review on immigration policy in multi-level settings ...... 7 Relevance of this thesis ...... 8 Methods ...... 9 Case selection: Boxtel and Heusden, and Utrecht ...... 11 1. Theoretic framework: agenda setting, intractable controversies and multi-level settings...... 12 Intractable policy controversies ...... 12 Agenda setting ...... 12 The problem agenda ...... 13 The political agenda ...... 13 The policy agenda ...... 14 Agenda setting in Multi-level perspective ...... 14 Policy entrepreneurs and new paths of coordination ...... 16 2. Dutch national policy frame on asylum reception ...... 18 The national asylum policy legacies and political trends ...... 18 Creating the national policy legacy: centralizing and tightening up ...... 18 The exclusionist character of asylum policy frames ...... 19 Discouragement polices and political agenda ...... 20 Political agenda: tough immigration policy ...... 20 The national government and asylum problem framing ...... 21 Because they can ...... 22 Because they want to ...... 23 Different visions on asylum reception policy ...... 23 An imminent need for new reception centers...... 24 Oranje: public unrest and political agenda changes ...... 25 Political agenda and agenda setting for new policy ...... 26 The national policy: two administrative agreements ...... 27 Policy agenda: the vertical coordination mechanism ...... 27 The administrative agreement: types of asylum reception centers ...... 29 National ‘sober’ policy frame in practice: large sober reception ...... 30 National ‘sober’ policy frame in practice: asylum seeker integration ...... 31
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Sober, no integration and emphasizing temporariness ...... 31 Conclusion ...... 33 3. Boxtel and Heusden: Local policy frame of societal harmony ...... 35 Political agenda ...... 35 Problem indication regarding scale: unrest in other cities ...... 36 New policy alternatives through experience ...... 36 Policy alternative: small scale centers for small communities ...... 37 Local policy frame: societal harmony ...... 38 Diverting policy frames and agenda setting ...... 40 Policy alignment, although frames still partially conflict ...... 40 4. Utrecht: framing asylum seekers as ‘Future Citizens’ ...... 42 Local problems: fear for testosterone bombs in Overvecht ...... 42 The city’s political agenda ...... 43 Pragmatic and humanitarian political agenda ...... 44 Framing asylum seekers as ‘Future Citizens’ ...... 45 Alternative Policy frame: Inclusive policy ...... 46 Policy entrepreneurialism and policy plans on language and work ...... 46 Strategic interaction and vertical venue-shopping ...... 48 COA’s approval; Dijkhoff is benevolent too ...... 49 5. Conclusions ...... 51 6. Limitations...... 55 References ...... 56 Appendix: Translations of quotes ...... 66
Fotocredit cover photo: Bart Maat (ANP) 9 oktober 2015. https://www.anpfoto.nl/search.pp?page=1&ShowPicture=34463684&pos=998
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Abstract
This thesis analyses the agenda setting of asylum reception policy on the national and local level in The Netherlands, and how these settings create a need for vertical interaction in multi-level settings. The Dutch asylum reception policy has been a centrally controlled policy field since the 1990s. Through agenda setting, which is formed by constellations of problem frames, policy alternatives and the political agenda, the national policy frame for a sober asylum reception has emerged. This sober policy frame comes from the notion that asylum seekers are nationally framed as possible ‘fortune-hunters’, and thus investment in the integration of these people is deemed to be undesirable as long as the asylum procedure has not yet decided if this person is a legitimate refugee. This sober reception policy and postponing integration of asylum seekers has been challenged on the local level. The municipalities of Boxtel and Heusden together, and the city of Utrecht faced local specific problems regarding asylum reception policy, out of which alternative policy frames emerged which included immediate integration of asylum seekers. The conflicting policy frame of Boxtel and Heusden finally even aligned with the national frame through top-down coordination. Utrecht set its agenda differently. By framing asylum seekers as ‘future citizens’, instead of ‘fortune-hunters’ an new policy frame is founded in the city of Utrecht, namely: a policy frame in which immediate investment in integration is deemed appropriate, disregarding if a person will stay in the Netherlands, or not. The government of Utrecht pursued its desired policy in a more strategic way than Boxtel and Heusden. The national policy frame still prescribes that financing and facilitating immediate integration of asylum seekers is undesirable, however, the local frame which aims at facilitating integration within its municipality has been approved and even applauded upon by the COA and the Minister of Justice. Therefore, from a multi-level perspective, this event can be interpreted as a successful local-led effort for change in asylum reception policy.
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Introduction
Because of consecutive wars and accumulating turmoil in Northern-Africa and the Middle- East, an ever growing amount of people is fleeing their homes and countries (Peters & Besley 2015, 1370). The main part of these people seeks refuge in neighboring countries (Ibid.). Yet another part of these people crosses the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. This influx of asylum seekers creates a great deal of political challenges for the members of the EU. The member states together have made several attempts to curtail the influx of asylum seekers, most recently by making a deal with Turkey in which it is agreed upon that asylum seekers can be send to Turkey should they reach the coast of Greece (Cunningham 2016). However, political disagreement between the EU and Turkey has already made the future of this deal uncertain (Ibid.), and even with these plans, it is among common believe that large amounts of asylum seekers will keep on coming to Europe for the years to come. The Dutch government and consequently its local governments are concerned with sheltering asylum seekers too. In the year 2015, 56,900 people have applied for asylum in the Netherlands, and in February 2016, the government had calculated that another 94,000 will arrive in this year (Website CBS 2016; Besselink 2016; Stokmans 2016). State Secretary for Security and Justice and Minister for Immigration Klaas Dijkhoff1 has been set before the task to set out asylum policy directions and to find sufficient new locations to shelter asylum seekers in. The current influx of asylum seekers exceeds the administrative capacity of the IND (Immigration & Naturalization Service), which is the national administrative agency that processes asylum applications. As a result of this asylum seekers currently have to wait up to fifteen months before their application is finally filed and decided upon (Website IND). The national government has decided that asylum seekers are to be sheltered in a ‘sober’ manner during the during and before the application period. This comes out of the national government’s rhetoric, that an asylum seeker could as well be an economic ‘fortune-hunter’, instead of a legitimate refugee. Financing and facilitating immediate integration of all asylum seekers could according to this rhetoric attract unwanted asylum seekers towards the Netherlands which would allegedly endanger the Dutch social services. Out of this notion the government has set out its policy which prescribes that investment in integration of asylum seekers is not desirable (‘Dijkhoff: proef kleinschalige opvang’ 2015). Instead, the Dutch
1 This is the official English translation of his administrative function from the website of the national government (rijksoverheid.nl).
4 asylum policy prescribes that asylum seekers should be accommodated in large capacity centers wherein their immediate integration is not financed or promoted. Some parties in parliament have opposed this policy and rejected it, finding it inhumane and undesirable (De Vries 2015). During the current asylum seeker influx, Dijkhoff has sent out an appeal to all municipal governments to help finding and allocating locations which might serve as new asylum reception centers. However, even though new centers are to be opened within municipalities, the centers themselves are centrally governed conform nationally outlined policy. Asylum reception policy has been a centralized policy field since 1994, when the centralized executive agency the COA (Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers) had been erected, which centrally manages the Dutch asylum reception centers according to the national asylum policy. Governments on the local level however often appear to be less concerned with the ideological and political standpoints and agendas out of which national policy is formed (Scholten 2011, 219). Instead, the municipal governments that are subject to this research seem to be more concerned with practical and pragmatic problems, such as the maintenance of public support, avoiding protests and the future integration and participation of accepted asylum seekers, when considering to open new asylum reception centers. In the municipalities of Boxtel and Heusden, as well as in the city of Utrecht, policies frame have been pushed forward in which the national desire of governing asylum reception through a sober policy was rejected. Instead, these local policies aimed at fostering societal harmony, through an inclusive policy which both addresses the concerns and complaints of the inhabitants of these cities, and the desire to immediately invest in integration and self- development of asylum seekers that are awaiting their procedure. Instead of framing asylum seekers as potential fortune-seekers, Utrecht frames asylum seekers as ‘future citizens,’ in whom its deemed desirable to invest and facilitate conditions to increase self-development and to start the integration process from the moment that they arrive in the Netherlands. This is thought to be a means for increasing the chance of creating a new group of self-reliant and participating civilians, either in the Netherlands or – when their procedure is declined – in their country of origin. This thesis argues that the different views on asylum reception policy originate from agenda setting at these two levels of government. The model of Schoten (2013) of agenda setting in multi-level settings is used to uncover the way certain policy perceptions, political trends and policy factors lead to certain types of policy frames, and through which multi-level
5 settings these governments interact to push the preferred policy frames forward. Scholten’s multi-level settings are categorized into four ideal models of governance coordination. These are: the top-down, the bottom-up, the multi-level and the decoupled setting (Scholten 2013, 4). When problem frames differ at the various levels, governments on the local level can interact differently with the national government. In the case study of Boxtel and Heusden, the national government’s policy frame was eventually transferred to the local level through top-down coordination. To the contrary, in the case of Utrecht specific local policy plans are successfully pushed forward from the bottom-up, and state approval was given to put these policies into practice. These events are studied in this thesis, in which the following questions are posed and answered: What policy frames on asylum seeker integration were formed due to agenda setting on the national and the local level in the two small cities of Boxtel and Heusden, and in Utrecht? And in what multi-level settings did the national and local governments interact in an attempt to put their desired policy into practice?
The differences between an asylum seeker and a refugee
The terms asylum seeker and refugee are often falsely interchanged. It is important to rightly define these two terms before going deeper into this research, because the subject of this thesis regards the sheltering of one of the two, namely: asylum seekers. The term asylum seeker is defined by the UNHCR (The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) as ‘someone whose request for sanctuary has yet to be processed’ (UNHCR 2016). Thus, an asylum seeker is a person that applies for asylum in a country, hoping to attain refugee status, but has not been granted this status (yet). In the Netherlands, there are several grounds on which a person can be recognized as a legitimate refugee. If a person can prove that he or she meets one of these legal terms, this person will attain refugee status. The most important and immediate terms by which a person can qualify for refugee status are the terms that are defined in the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (UNHCR 2010). According to this Protocol, refugee status is granted to a person “who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion (Ibid. 3).” Thus due to this convention, a person facing persecution on any of these five grounds in the country of
6 origin, will be granted refugee status. Someone who has refugee status is also referred to as a ‘status holder.’ However, in the Dutch Alien law, refugee status can also be attained by people that do not necessarily meet these criteria of the Convention. The Alien Law also grants asylum to a person that can prove that he or she has founded reasons to believe that if he or she would be evicted that he or she will face: torture, execution, or random violence because of international or domestic wars (Vreemdelingenwet 2000 (2000) art. 29. Lid 1B). Almost every asylum seeker from Eritrea and Syria, the two countries out of which the largest part of the asylum seekers in the current asylum influx come from, attain asylum in the Netherlands either on the terms of the Convention, or on these additional terms (Interview IND). When an asylum seeker attains refugee status, he or she will attain a residence permit; if a person does not attain asylum, this person is requested to return to his or her country of origin.
Literature review on immigration policy in multi-level settings
This thesis elaborates on the current literature on migration and asylum policy in multi-level settings. Multi-level settings are the various modes of governance and the various ways in which governments on the local, national and European level can interact (for example: top- down or bottom-up) (Scholten 2013, 4). Governance in EU-states has increasingly become a multi-level phenomenon over the last decades (Ibid. 3) And by now there is no denying that modern complex governmental issues are often subject to a complex array of multiple levels of governance. Because of decentralization processes and the European integration, EU-states at this day for sure are no longer fully centralized states (Hooghe & Marks 2001, 1). In some occurrences, policy is however still governed in a top-down manner. The subject of this thesis, the Dutch asylum reception policy, is an example of a top-down governed policy field, in which a responsible centralized organ executes the national policy that is set out by the responsible minister/State Secretary. However, since the turn of the millennium, many scholars have increasingly emphasized the local dimension of immigrant integration policy making (Alexander 2007; Caponio and Borkert 2010; Pennix, Kraal, Martinello & Vertovec 2004; Myrberg 2015; Kos, Maussen & Doomernik. 2015; Scholten 2013, 2015). These studies, out of many things,
7 reveal that local policy efforts may deviate significantly from the nationally formulated policies on immigrant integration. This led many scholars to no longer to merely try to understand how policies on immigration and integration are decided upon and carried out through the traditional top-down manner of analysis. Instead, they have underlined the importance of researching immigration and integration policy from a multi-level perspective (Zincone & Caponio 2006, 269). Myrberg (2015) for example has analyzed the way in which municipal governments in Denmark and Sweden urged for changes in national migration and asylum policies, because of the larger ‘burden of reception’ these municipalities had to carry as a result of growing amounts of asylum seekers coming in. In doing so, local governments in these countries were shifting from a passive to an active role in multi-level settings in terms of the decision process of asylum reception policy making (Myrberg 2015, 3). The study of Kos e.a. (2015) even shows how a local government has bypassed national policy that rejected a policy aimed at providing shelter for rejected asylum seekers and illegal aliens. Scholten (2013, 2015) elaborates on these studies and the active role of local governments in creating immigration policy. He uncovered that integration policy as made and framed by the Dutch government diverted from the local policy frames in the cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. From a multi-level perspective, he discovered that the Dutch policy frames divert because a strong vertical policy coordination structure on immigration and integration policy is absent in the Netherlands. He argues that because of the absence of this mechanism, frame alignment does not occur, and consequently does policy as it is carried out on the local level differ from the policy frame on immigration on the national level. He called this multi-level setting the decoupled scenario (Ibid.).
Relevance of this thesis
Asylum reception policy is currently subject to much debate. The national government just barely keeps up with opening sufficient new asylum reception centers to cope with the influx of asylum seekers (‘Dijkhoff: gemeenten moeten snel’ 2016). On the local level, asylum reception poses yet other problems and opportunities. This thesis addresses some of the most recent debates on the Dutch asylum reception policy. For the obvious reason that all these events have only just happened, there has been done little research on these matters. In fact, by my knowledge there is no published research on this subject and the studied cases yet.
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Therefore, this research is one of the most recent contributions in the field of research on asylum reception policy in the Netherlands. In past research, asylum reception policy has been only marginally studied from a multi-level perspective. After reading the second chapter of this thesis, one might realize that this is no coincidence. Asylum reception and integration policy has been a typically centralized, thus top-down governed field of policy. Studying this field in multi-level settings perhaps had not been too interesting, because local governments had little or no say in the way asylum reception centers were governed. In the current events, in which local governments have been asked to find new locations for asylum reception centers within the borders of their municipalities, some municipalities have urged for changes in asylum policy and have also pursued these new policies. This study has analyzed the emergence of these alternative agendas of Boxtel and Heusden together, and Utrecht, and it also has analyzed the efforts of these governments made to both influence national policy and to pursue their own policy paths on the local level. In doing so, this study is a relevant addition to the scientific field, but could also serve as an inspirational and informative source of information for policy makers on both the national and local level.
Methods
This thesis consists of a qualitative case study of the creation and formation of the Dutch national asylum reception policy, as well as how alternative policies are made and pushed forward on the local level of the small municipalities of Boxtel and Heusden together, and Utrecht. Using the concept of policy framing, this study takes in the ontological position of constructivism (Bryman 2008, 33). These policy frames are products of structured social relations, and are attained through Scholten’s model on agenda setting in multi-level settings (Scholten 2011, 2013). The agenda setting accounts for understanding the constant changing perception of the problem at hand and consequently the policy which is thought to address this problem best. This qualitative research is done by a deductive approach, and analyses how the policy frames on the local and national level have come about and how these frames interact through the theoretic model of Scholten (2013). In order to understand the frames and agendas, I have conducted semi-structured interviews with policy makers and politicians from several local governments. These types of interviews are therefore particularly useful for obtaining insights on problem and policy
9 frames of the interviewed respondents, because semi-structured interviews are specifically used for their capacity to provide insights into how research participants see the world (Ibid. 471). Some questions regarding the way problems concerning asylum reception were asked at the several respondents in a similar fashion, in order to attain consistent information on the way the policy and problems regarding asylum reception policy are perceived. However, most questions were different for each of the respondents, because of the array of contextual differences between the two cases. This is no limitation for this study. To the contrary, the differences between the cases give a fine perspective on how differences of context and different ways of agenda setting can result in different settings of governance coordination. To understand the vertical policy coordination structure I have conducted several open and semi-structured interviews with policy makers of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG), as well as local policy makers and politicians. Additionally I have gathered information on this coordination from existing literature, policy documents and the websites of the national government and of the executive agency the COA. Due to reasons of non- compliance by the respondents that I approached for obtaining information in order to create the national frame and agendas (The ministry of Justice and Safety and the COA), I have used a combination of the existing literature on national immigration policy, newspaper articles and policy documents for the analysis of the national policy frame. The first chapter of this thesis consists of the used theory of Scholten (2013) on agenda setting in multi-level settings. The second chapter forms the analysis of the agenda setting on asylum reception policy on the national level. To understand the current trend of asylum reception policy, a historical trend and the emergence of asylum reception policy is outlined first. Thereafter, the way the national government has framed the problem, which policy is desired to resolve this problem and how the new policy came about through agenda setting. After the national agenda setting is outlined, the national policy is elaborated on as it is written down in the national policy documents: the administrative agreements. The second chapter consists of the agenda setting of the municipal governments of Boxtel and Heusden, on the way these municipalities together came to an alternative policy, and on how these governments tried to engage with the national government to pursue their policy plan. The final chapter does the same for the agenda setting on asylum reception policy in the city of Utrecht. This chapter is followed by the final conclusion and the limitations of this study.
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Case selection: Boxtel and Heusden, and Utrecht
The cases were selected for their uniqueness and should not necessarily be seen as generalizable cases. Instead, the selected cases, Boxtel and Heusden together and Utrecht, describe events of pioneering and entrepreneurialism from municipal governments that are advocating for changes in asylum reception policy from the bottom-up. Because of their uniqueness, I found that these cases are particularly interesting in the light of the used theory. The theory of Scholten (2013) aims at finding intractable policy controversies that create conflicting agendas on the national and local government from a multi-level perspective. His theory hypothesizes that these conflicting agendas can pave new paths of vertical coordination. The national asylum reception policy has been a highly politicized and centralized issue since the 1990s. Currently however, different visions on asylum reception policy on the local and national level seem to lead to a change in this vertical coordination. The cases of Boxtel and Heusden combined and Utrecht alone stand out as cases in which municipal governments have attempted to engage in ways of multi-level governance to change the current status quo on asylum reception policy. Boxtel and Heusden are taken together because these neighboring municipal governments opted for change together. The mayors of these two cities together created an alternative policy frame, which they tried to push through on the national level. The municipal government of Utrecht has recently successfully stood up as a policy entrepreneur in asylum reception policy.
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1. Theoretic framework: Agenda setting, intractable controversies and multi-level settings
The theory that is used in this thesis is Scholten’s agenda setting for intractable policy controversies in multi-level settings. This theory seeks to understand how policies are framed due to patterns of agenda setting on various levels of government, and also serves as a model to investigate how these agendas interact in terms of multi-level settings (Scholten 2013).
Intractable policy controversies
Policy frames are socially constructed, reformulated public discourses through which it is argued that certain problems are to be addressed through a certain desired (set of) policy (Scholten 2011). These frames are typically construed to instigate normative leaps from the way a particular policy currently exists and operates, towards how this policy ‘is ought to be’ according to the actors that support this particular frame (Ibid.). Scholten’s (2013) model is aimed at analyzing particular problems in regard to policy frames. These problems are called ‘wicked problems’ (Durant & Legge 2006) or: ‘intractable policy controversies’ (Schön & Rein 1994). These terms refer to situations wherein there is an absence of a generally accepted policy frame at the various levels of government (Poppelaars & Scholten 2008, 4). Policy frames are intractable when the involved actors have different ideas about the issue, or even worse, disagree about if there even is an issue to begin with (Scholten 2013, 219). This could pose very specific problems and challenges in multi-level settings, because the framing of the problem and the preferred policy to address the problem can differ severely between the policy frames on the different levels (Ibid.). Conflicting frames appear to resist resolution of the problem and can obstruct critical debates about the problem between the different levels (Ibid.). When governments at the local and national level have divergent ideas about what the problem is, and how this problem should be solved, successful coordination and interaction between the levels can be complicated (Ibid.). Diverting policy frames as the result of intractable policy controversies can consequently end up in stalemates. However, these frame conflicts can also instigate demand for changes in policy.
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Agenda setting
Scholten uses agenda setting to uncover how policy is being framed at the various levels of government (Scholten 2013, 219). This comes from the literature on agenda setting, which argues that the patterns of agenda setting affect the way in which policy problems are framed (Baumgartner & Jones 1993; Jones & Baumgartner 2005). Indeed, Rein and Schön, (1994) understand frames in a relational perspective, and recognize the influence of structural settings, political agendas and institutional policy factors, on the way in which framing takes place (Scholten 2011, 33). Elaborating on the broader literature of agenda setting, Scholten’s (2013) model consists of three agendas: the problem, political and policy agenda. These three agendas together can create structures for policy frames to emerge.
The problem agenda
This agenda indicates the way problems are illustrated or ‘framed’ by decision-makers (Balzacq 2010). Therefore it is necessary to address the problem agenda from a framing perspective (Scholten 2013, 219). It is required to look at the indication and framing of a problem on a certain level of government. As is the case with intractable policy controversies, problems that are recognized as such on one level, may not be recognized as a problem at all on another level. Furthermore, an issue only becomes a problem from the moment that decision-makers see and frame the issue as such. It also can be the case that out of the same event or issue, two different problems are derived on the various levels.
The political agenda
The political agenda in Scholten’s theory is determined by the political balance of power on a level of government. Several elements are important in this agenda, such as elections, changes in parliament, but also campaigns or strikes by pressure groups or civilians (Kingdon, 2014). Another important part of the political agenda is the way certain topics are being prioritized and pushed forward for attention, and how other topics are being structurally ignored (Hilgartner & Bosk 1988). Politicizing, or instead depoliticizing a subject can respectively attract or push away certain topics from the central government’s agenda. On the other hand, local governments can engage in strategic interaction to push a certain issue on the national agenda (See Table 1). This can be done formally, for example by addressing a local issue in the news to draw national attention or by meeting with a national politician. It
13 can also be done through more informal processes, like vertical venue shopping (Scholten 2013, 219). Guiraudon (2000) uses the term vertical venue-shopping as a political tactic by which local governments try to by-pass the national political power center by addressing an international institution or law. Or in Scholten’ words, vertical venue-shopping is: ‘strategic interaction between government levels in an effort to achieve policy opportunities that cannot be realized on another level’ (Scholten 2013, 220). An example of this is the way the municipality of Utrecht used an EU-charter on human rights to by-pass the national legislation that was opposed to sheltering rejected asylum seekers and immigrants. This EU charter stated that all people have the universal right on shelter, food and clothes. Finally, the European Committee of Social Rights had decided that the national government had wrongfully excluded aliens because they had ignored this human right. Consequently, the national government had to comply with this higher legislation, by which Utrecht could continue sheltering rejected asylum seekers (Interview Braat).
The policy agenda
Scholten’s policy agenda encompasses the institutionalized policy at the several levels (Kingdon 2014; Scholten 2013, 219). These factors can play a decisive institutional role regarding the multi-level setting by which governance is coordinated (See Table 1). If the national policy agenda is for example centralized, policy frames are typically transferred in a top-down structure. Such a top-down structure can lead to path-dependency of the policy frames on the lower levels of government (Ibid. 220). New policy can be put on the agenda too. The various levels of government have their own policy legacies which can provide opportunities for policy learning. By combining existing policies, new problems can be addressed through a process of issue-linkages. To solve a new problem, issue-linkages can be created between a new problem and an existing policy (Scholten 2013, 219).
Agenda setting in Multi-level perspective
The theory of Scholten hypothesizes a relationship between the level-specific waysof agenda setting, and modes of governance in multi-level settings (Scholten 2013, 220). As can be seen above, diverting policy frames are in need of different solutions, creating an intractable
14 policy controversy. Because of this need for different solutions, new paths in multi-level settings can be demanded, and through specific policy institutions or political strategies can these policy frames be pushed forward. In his theory, Scholten has categorized the vertical interaction between the various levels in the multi-level setting in four different ideal models of multi-level settings. These models are: the centralist, the multi-level, the localist and the decoupled setting. The centralist model reflects the classical top-down relationship between national and local governments (Scholten 2013, 220). The fundamental idea of this perspective is that the national government holds primacy on formulating the policies. The role of local governments is confined to being involved in implementing the policy at most. In terms of agenda setting, the centralist model is most likely to occur when policies regarding to the issue are framed as national problems in need of clear national solutions (Scholten 2013, 220). In a centralist scenario, the issue is usually politicized on the national level, and it is expected that there is a strong national framework for vertical policy coordination (Table 1). A means of consolidating a strong nation-led vertical coordination can be done by assigning a politically responsible minister that governs a certain policy field, which then is executed by a specialized central department (Scholten 2015). In these cases it policy frames on the various levels are typically vertically aligned in the way prescribed by the national government, meaning that local policies will be reframed in accordance to the national frame (Ibid). The multi-level model assumes some form of horizontally and vertically coordinated interaction in a specific policy domain between various levels of government (Scholten 2013, 220). With regard to agenda setting, a multi-level governance model is most, and perhaps only likely to occur in situations where the multi-level character of the policy problem is recognized (Scholten 2013, 220). Thirdly, localist approaches refer to types and fields of governance that have devolved policies to local governments. This model consists of a bottom-up scenario wherein policies are not only made by national governments, like in the centralist model, but instead are made from within localities. This model illustrates a setting of governance wherein local governments steer upon new paths of policy, and instead of only following up on national policy, local governments in this model set the agendas and make policy themselves (Ibid.). In agenda setting, this perspective may erect when problems are defined as specific local problems in need of local solutions, or nation-wide problems which are in need of clear adjusted local solutions (Ibid.). In doing so, the policy problems are often phrased as in need
15 of policy that is ‘close to the citizen’, or ‘requiring practical knowledge’ (Ibid.). Strong local leadership is often required to define an issue as distinctly local and to put forward an alternative policy for example by engaging in political strategies such as vertical venue shopping (Ibid.). The last model is governance decoupling. This scenario is the most likely to occur when there is no meaningful or working vertical interaction between the levels of government. Policy frames are created differently at different levels, and may even contradict and conflict with each other. These situations can occur for example when the various government levels are involved in the same policy area, but they define and frame the policy problem in a different way (Scholten 2013, 220). This could not only lead to political conflict between the levels, but could also create conflicting policy messages which can result in a diminishment of policy effectiveness (Ibid.).
Overview of perspectives on governance in multi-level settings Centralist Governance Multi-level governance Localist or devolved Governance governance decoupling Problem Problems are defined as Differentiated Problems are defined Problems defined agenda central problems perspective on problems, as ‘local’ problems in conflicting ways requiring central with national as well as requiring ‘local’ solutions local aspects solutions Political Political primacy, Depoliticization, Politicization on Political conflicts agenda national political technical orientation, local level, local between levels leadership, centralist vertical venue shopping leadership political network Policy Strong central policy Weak central policy Little or no central Policy conflicts agenda coordination structure coordination structures, policy coordination, between different (hierarchy), issue strong multi-level horizontal policy levels, conflicting connections with ‘functionalist’ structures learning at local level policy messages broader central policies Table 1. (Scholten 2013, 221).
Policy entrepreneurs and new paths of coordination
These four models of vertical coordination are not rigid. Different configurations of agenda setting in multi-level settings can contribute to altering the vertical coordination structure. If a certain policy is framed as a typically national problem in need of national solutions, it is
16 probable that a strong vertical coordination structure is also established to address the problem in a centralized way. Instead, when a certain issue that is framed on the local level as an issue in need of clear local solutions is not represented on the national agenda at all, local governments can defect from national policy, and, if possible, follow its own desired policy path. This creates the decoupled setting. Secondly, local governments can stand up and act as policy entrepreneurs. By performing entrepreneurial maneuvers, local governments can push locally framed policies forward from the bottom-up, leading to what was described above as a localist mode of governance (Scholten 2013, 222). Scholten (2015) shows how the city of Rotterdam stood up as a policy entrepreneur on immigration policy. In 2005, this city’s government managed to push through a new law on the national level which was aimed at preventing the settlement of people with a low-income or with social security benefits in certain urban areas. This law itself is only implemented in Rotterdam. However, it was necessary to turn to the national government in order to create such a law (Scholten 2015, 17).
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2. Dutch national policy frame on asylum reception
The national asylum policy legacies and political trends
Immigration control and asylum seeker reception policies came into existence through a lengthy process in which consecutive national governments have tried to increase control over immigration processes (Doomernik 2008, 142-143). Before the 1980s there were hardly any laws restricting immigration: national asylum laws were almost entirely based on the Geneva Convention (Mattheijer 2000, 9). As can be seen above in the introductory chapter, the Geneva Convention had outlined who has to be granted asylum – and who was not. Additionally, the terms of this Convention have lain out the rights of people who are granted asylum (UNHCR 2010).
Creating the national policy legacy: centralizing and tightening up
Until deep in the 1980s, asylum applications had been incidental. When this changed, the Dutch government started tightening up immigration laws and centralized asylum policy. The first severe changes in the Dutch asylum policy were implemented as a reaction to an unprecedented wave of asylum seekers from former-Yugoslavian countries, fleeing this war- ravished region (Mattheijer 2000; Doomernik 2008, 131). In the peak year in 1994 about 52,500 people requested asylum in the Netherlands (Salm 2015). Asylum became a central political problem throughout much of this decade (Doomernik 2008, 138). The decentralized way in which asylum reception had functioned prior to the 1990s was deemed to be unsustainable and undesirable for the reception of large amounts of asylum seekers (Matthijer 2000, 9). People that applied for asylum in the Netherlands before this decade were free to live where they wanted in this country during the asylum procedure. They could settle in the city, and even in the neighborhood of their preference. Asylum seekers attained welfare allowance, which they could use freely as pocket money (Ibid.). To control and manage the large influx of asylum seekers, the COA was established in 1994. This executive agency is responsible for facilitating the centralized regulation and reception of asylum seekers. Apart from the organizational advantage of this centralized reception system, this new system turned out to be much more cost-efficient, as the costs per asylum request had decreased after the installation of this institution (Doomernik 2008, 139).
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Two years later the IND was established. This centralized agency assesses whether an asylum seeker is to be granted asylum, or not (Matthijer 2000, 24). After 1994, subsequent policies on immigration control and asylum regulation were implemented which were focused on internal control: measures that are aimed at regulating and controlling as well as excluding illegal residents from certain goods (Engbersen and Broeders 2007, 1592). As the result of the European integration, outer border control decreasingly became a national matter. This became part of the European immigration and asylum policy (Lahav & Guiraudon 2006, Pluymen 2008, Doomernik 2008; Kos e.a. 2015).
The exclusionist character of asylum policy frames
Many laws such as the compulsory identification act of 1994/2005, the Marriage Convenience Act of 1994 and the Linkage Act of 1998 were implemented, which were aimed at categorizing those who have rights – and those who do not (Doomernik 2008, 137). According to Joanna van der Leun (2006) this policy path of exclusion of (unwanted) immigrants, came from the idea that the Dutch public welfare services served as a ‘migrant- magnet’, as well as from the growing notion that the Netherlands was ‘full’ (Van der Leun 2006, 313). Because of this, the influx of Yugoslavian refugees was being perceived as a ‘refugee crisis’ which, if left uncontrolled, could ‘endanger the welfare state’ (Ibid.). Important policy measures regarding asylum seekers and aliens in the years after further established the exclusionary asylum policies. These were again to curtail the influx of asylum seekers (Ibid.; Doomernik 2008, 313). First, the new law on remigration went in effect in 1998, and in 2001 the revised Aliens Act was enacted. The first law was to simplify the deportation of rejected asylum seekers; the latter aimed at speeding up the asylum procedure, by allowing the authorities to deny certain asylum applications right away (Ibid). These new laws successfully curtailed the influx of asylum seekers, and in the years after, the implementation the amount of asylum applications dropped dramatically (Doomernik 2008, 139). The Aliens Act proved to be very strict. With the ability to reject asylum seekers at the first instance, over 70% of the asylum applications were rejected (Ibid.). Because of these laws, the Dutch asylum policy attained the reputation of being one of the strictest in Europe, having the lowest acceptance rate in Europe at the start of the millennium (Versteegt & Maussen, 2012, 15, 26). In the years after 2004 until 2013, the annual amount of asylum applications had dropped to 10-15,000, while a year prior to the
19 implementation of the Aliens Act in 2000, 44,000 applications were registered (Doomernik 2008, 139; CBS).
Discouragement polices and political agenda
More efforts were made to exclude rejected asylum seekers and illegal immigrants from profiting from social benefits. The Linking Act (Koppelingswet), which was aimed at discouraging illegal work and residents, is an example of this. It was assumed that these measures would make illegal immigrants return to their home countries (Kos e.a. 2015, 9; Bruquetas-Callejo Garcés-Mascareñas, Penninx & Scholten 2011, 155). These measures have been called the so-called Dutch ‘discouragement policy’ (Van der Leun 2006). These policies were aimed at deterring ‘bogus asylum seekers’ and economic refugees – who in the current debate would be referred to as ‘fortune-hunters’i (Van der Velden 2014, 6). So, as will be seen below, this same rhetoric is used in the current national problem frame. And within the tradition of discouragement, recently it is suggested by members in parliament to implement policy to discourage asylum seekers from coming to the Netherlands (Pelgrim, Versteegh, Kuiper & Brummelman 2016).
Political agenda: tough immigration policy
Already being the main political concern in the 1990s, asylum seeker and immigrant policy became even more of a politicized subject after the change of the millennium (Doomernik 2008, 138; Scholten 2011, 184). In his study on changes in immigrant and integration policy frames over the previous decades, Scholten (2011) indicates that due to the internationalization processes of the EU and rising questions about national identity in the Netherlands and in other EU countries, Dutch immigration and integration policy issues have become increasingly politicized (Scholten 2011, 184). This trend was amplified because of the murder of the right wing populist politician Pim Fortuyn. After his death, immigrant integration became a highly important and symbolic political agenda point for national politicians (Scholten 2011, 225). As will be seen later, this trend is still very much existent in national politics on asylum seekers and migration. The national government holds strong political primacy concerning immigration and asylum policy. Politicians on the national level feel the need to immediately respond tough on immigration issues, to resolve unrest and counter populist agendas (Kos e.a. 2015). At the same time, a different trend emerged on the
20 local level of government according to Scholten (2011, 280). Here, more pragmatic attempts are made to conduct policies in a more effective, local-specific way.
The national government and asylum problem framing
The current national government consists of a coalition of the moderate right-wing liberal VVD (40 seats) and the social-democratic PvdA (36 seats). These two parties take in conflicting positions in the asylum reception policy debate. The VVD has repeatedly stated to hold a benevolent stance towards taking measures to keep asylum seekers outside of Europe altogether (Azmani 2015; VVD 2015; Hoedeman & Den Hartog 2015; website VVD 2016), while the PvdA insists that it is the responsibility of the EU and the Netherlands to take in asylum seekers in a just way (Herderscheê, 2015; De Vries 2015). In March 2015, VVD- parliament member Malik Azmani published his – then – controversial plan to control the influx of asylum seekers. In this plan he emphasized that the EU policy on immigration was no longer sustainable (Azmani 2015). This was because the ‘ever growing influx of asylum seekers’ according to his plan, ‘forms a big threat to our [the people of the Netherlands] safety’ (Ibid.). This threat was multiple. According to his plan, the influx of asylum seekers “puts the social services under pressure.” Azmani sees too many asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands and he puts their motives for coming to this country to question. “Currently, there is no way knowing who we take in: a real refugee, a fortune-hunter or a terrorist.”ii (Ibid.). The problem that Azmani indicated, namely, that many asylum seekers might be economic ‘fortune-hunters’ (people that allegedly flee their countries not out of fear of persecution, but to seek a better economic future), has become a fundamental part of his party’s rhetoric and is an important part for the justification of attempts for implementing asylum policy which is to stop unwanted asylum seekers from coming to, and staying in the Netherlands. This terminology is not only used by the VVD. The populist party the PVV continuously uses this term, and it has become a part of protest discourse against the coming of asylum reception centers (De Graaf & Huisman 2016). The Dutch European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans also used this term, when he stated in February 2016 that 60% of the incoming asylum seekers are fortune-hunters (Rosman 2016). These statistics were already countered and suggested to be false by the IOM and other organizations a day after. However, this statement shows how deeply embedded the fortune-hunter frame is, and
21 how it is used to put pressure on political agendas towards finding ways to curtail the influx of these unwanted people from coming into the EU (Ibid.). The plan of Azmani to close the borders was rejected by the PvdA, and failed to attain a majority in parliament. This plan consequently did not pass through as governmental policy (‘Kabinet neemt VVD-plan niet over’ 2015). However, during the height of the asylum seeker influx in October 2015 the fraction leader of the VVD, Halble Zijlstra, published a new plan which shows strong resemblance with the plan of Azmani. Zijlstra framed the increased influx of asylum seekers in an interview as a problem that could bring the Dutch society into a “deep crisis” (Hoedeman & Den Hartog 2015). He elaborates on these words by saying that “the European societies cannot cope with the enormous amount of migrants.”iii According to him, the problem lies in the “current asylum policy”, which “is no longer sustainable”iv (Website VVD 2016). If nothing is done, “the social services of the Dutch people are at stake.”v (Ibid.). To address this problem, the VVD proposed a twofold policy plan which included putting the influx of asylum seekers into the EU to a halt, as well as making the Netherlands less attractive for asylum seekers (Pijpker & Smal 2015).
Because they can
In their plan, the VVD framed the influx asylum seekers and consequently asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands, as the problem. In the policy plan of the VVD, named ‘Limiting shelter’vi, which was published in October 2015, two causes for the asylum problem were put forward. Following up on Azmani’s plan, this plan insists that the first and foremost reason of the increased influx of asylum seekers into the Netherlands, is that asylum seekers can come into the Netherlands (Website VVD 2015). By saying that they can, the plan refers to the open borders of the EU. Also, within the EU the Dublin protocol fails to organize asylum reception by EU countries. The Dublin Protocol prescribes that the member state through which an asylum seeker first entered the EU or the Scandinavian Peninsula, is the state “responsible for the examination of an asylum claim” (Website ERCE). At the moment, this Protocol is being ignored by the member countries, and thus asylum seekers regularly move through several EU-countries until they apply for asylum in a specific country (Kieft & Smit 2016; Schmidt 2016). To address the perceived problem – being: unwanted asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands because they can – new restrictive measures have been put forward by the VVD
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(Du Pre 2015a). The VVD’s policy plan has been set out to find ways to curtail the influx of unwanted asylum seekers coming into the Netherlands, preferably by keeping them out of the EU altogether. In accordance to this, the national government wishes to accomplish curtailing the influx of asylum seekers by closing the borders and financing reception centers ‘in the region’ (Website VVD 2016). With centers ‘in the region’ one should think of reception centers being placed near the asylum seeker’s country of origin, and outside of the EU. The accommodation in the region should serve as an alternative for housing asylum seekers in the Netherlands. On the website, the VVD insists that “refugees have right on safety.” But in their perspective: “this does not have to be in Europe” (VVD 2015, 2).vii
Because they want to
The VVD’s second problem frame addresses inner control and asylum reception policy, and thus its framing and policy is a central part of this thesis’ analysis. The second part of the VVD’s problem frame, indicates that asylum seekers come to the Netherlands because they want to (VVD 2015, 1). viii According to this VVD letter, asylum seekers come to the Netherlands because of the country’s “generous social services” (VVD 2015, 1).ix Zijlstra frames asylum seekers as being a threat to the welfare state: “The medical costs are rising, the housing market is stuck. We have to go towards a minimum level for these refugees. The Dutch social services are on the line, and it is my duty as a politician to defend our welfare level that we have worked so hard for”x (‘Zijlstra pleit’ 2015). To address this problem, the VVD suggests that the asylum reception policy should become of a ‘sober’ kind. Sobering up asylum policy, should make “the Netherlands unattractive for people that do not seek safety, but that come here to find a better economic future” (Ibid.).xi A sober policy, according to the VVD would thus be a means to make sure that asylum seekers “don’t want to cross our [the Dutch] border” (VVD 2015, 1).xii This plan of the VVD clearly comes from the frame which sees asylum seekers as potential fortune- hunters, who should be discouraged from coming to the Netherlands.
Different visions on asylum reception policy
The coalition party the PvdA opposed the new plans of Zijlstra. Closing off the borders did not fit in the PvdA’s perception on the issue of asylum seekers. Instead of entirely closing off the borders, the PvdA urges for a controlled manner of taking in asylum seekers. The PvdA
23 states that they do not wish to keep asylum seekers outside of Europe altogether. Instead, they state to aim at creating a “humane, sustainable and legal route for asylum seekers to enter Europe”xiii (Samsom 2016). The sober and even discouraging policy of the VVD did not fit in the PvdA’s vision either. During a parliamentary debate, Samsom stated to find it undesirable to sober up the asylum reception centers and especially rejected using a sober policy as a means to discourage asylum seekers from coming to the Netherlands (De Vries 2015). Its Member of Parliament Attje Kuiken said to “reject strategic discouragement through means of unequal treatment. Instead, we wish to house refugees decently, the way we have always done”xiv (Herderscheê, 2015). Yet other views are heard by the opposition parties in parliament. The populist right- wing party the PVV of Geert Wilders (12 seats) aims at keeping asylum seekers outside of the Netherlands altogether and has published that they find efforts of other parties aiming at letting asylum seekers come into the Netherlands ‘absurd’ (Website PVV ‘Debat over opvang’). From the central and left-wing parties such as the D66 (12 seats) and GroenLinks (4 seats) other voices are heard. These parties urge for a humanitarian approach of asylum seekers reception which includes taking in asylum seekers and facilitating immediate integration (Website GroenLinks ‘Vluchtelingen’; Website D66 ‘Een rechtvaardig asielbeleid’).
An imminent need for new reception centers
The governmental debate regarding new asylum policy went on, but did not come to a resolution until half a year later. Asylum seekers coming into the Netherlands could obviously not wait until the Dutch national politicians would overcome their ideological differences, and beds and shelter for these people had to be found immediately. Only just before the asylum influx intensified, the COA only had a capacity to accommodate 13,000 asylum seekers (COA 2013, 15). The COA has always adjusted its shelter capacity to match the amount of asylum seekers that were residing in the centers (Ibid.). This capacity had been low until 2012, because the influx of asylum seekers had been relatively low since 2002 as the result of the restrictive national policies, shorter procedures and an overall decrease of asylum seeker applications in Europe (Doomernik 2008; Van der Leun 2006, 313; COA 2013, 15).
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This trend turned dramatically in 2014 when an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers entered Europe as well as the Netherlands. And a year later the Netherlands experienced the largest amount of asylum applications to date. According to the IND, 56,900 people had sought refuge in the Netherlands in this year (Website CBS 2016). These people predominantly originate from Syria and Eritrea (Ibid.). The responsibility over the governmental task to manage and search new asylum reception centers had been handed over to Klaas Dijkhoff in March 2015, when he became the successor of Fred Teeven as the State Secretary for Security and Justice and Minister for Immigration. Dijkhoff and the COA had intensively sought places to open asylum reception centers. In 2014, the COA quickly had opened twenty new (temporary) centers in an effort to keep up with the increased influx of asylum seekers (COA 2015). These efforts were however insufficient to keep up with the growing influx of asylum seekers. Therefore, Dijkhoff did an appeal on the country’s municipal governments and asked these governments to help finding and allocating (temporary) locations to shelter asylum seekers (Hendrickx & Righton 2015).
Oranje: public unrest and political agenda changes
October turned out to be the most critical month of this year for Dijkhoff. In the month before, 12,800 asylum seekers had tried to apply for asylum (Van den Dool 2015). The IND and the COA were not prepared for administering this amount of asylum seekers. Not enough new locations were allocated, and consequently the COA did not dispose of a sufficient capacity to house the newly arriving asylum seekers (Ibid.). Therefore, Dijkhoff had decided not to wait any longer and took matters into his own hands. He abruptly decided that the existing temporary asylum reception center in the small municipality of Oranje had to double its capacity. This meant that this center had to house an additional 700 asylum seekers, while this town only inhabited 150 people (Fontein, 2015). The reception center was indeed spacious enough and considered fit for housing double the amount of asylum seekers (Ibid.). However, the municipal government had only six months earlier opened this center under the condition that this center would house no more than 700 asylum seekers (Van de Poll 2015). The inhabitants of Oranje felt betrayed by the decision of Dijkhoff and started a riot when Dijkhoff came into this town to announce his plan (Fontein 2015). This upheaval clearly had an impact on the Minister for Immigration, who reversed his decision and the amount of asylum seekers that would be housed in Oranje was brought back to the initial 700
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(Van de Poll 2015). This event also instigated two other changes. First, Dijkhoff has not forced any municipality to host more asylum seekers since, nor has he ever forced a municipality to open a new center (Interview VNG), although he did tell the press on the day after the riot in Oranje that he might still use his power to demand the opening of an emergency asylum reception center in the future (Van den Dool 2015). But even more striking was that this decision and the riot that followed out of it put urgency on the national political agenda to resolve the stalemate in the national asylum policy debate.
Political agenda and agenda setting for new policy
After this event, the national government felt the need to come to a resolution in the asylum policy debate. The policy plan of Zijlstra, which only a week before was confronted with a similar opposition by the PvdA as the plan of Azmani, suddenly came to be seen as a viable option. A parliamentary debate was held, in which the PvdA agreed upon a compromised version of the VVD’s ‘sober’ policy. The compromised asylum policy would be called ‘Sober and Just’xv (De Vries 2015; Abels 2015). Whatever this ‘Sober’ and ‘Just’ practically implied remained largely unclear in parliament (De Vries 2015). However, the rejection of the PvdA of the VVD’s plan’s on sobering up asylum reception was in the end only short-termed, and so the new path for asylum policy frame be promoting a sober reception policy. Samsom reacted on his party’s compromise as that “it is already a step in the right direction that the people see that the government does something”xvi (Abels, 2015), clearly underlining the politicization of immigration policies since the 2000s in which politicians feel compelled to respond quickly and boldly to migration issues. Kos e.a. (2015) elaborate on this trend, stating that governments are currently under high pressure to act ‘tough’ on immigration “in response to electoral pressure from the rise of the populist Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders” (Kos e.a. 2015, 8). This rise in popularity of the populist PVV indeed likely influences the government’s stance towards immigrants. The PVV addresses the popular concerns in the most radical way. According to national polls it seems that this political stance has contributed to a steep rise in support for the PVV. Since the peak of the asylum seeker influx in October 2015, Wilders’ party gained an average of 1 extra hypothesized seat per week (“Keulen’ levert monsterscore’ 2016). When at New Year’s day a large group of predominantly newly arrived people from African and Middle-Eastern origin, had sexually assaulted many women in Köln, the polls
26 spiked in favor of the PVV. A couple of days after this event, the national polls predicted that this party would attain 41seats if elections were held at that time, which at the same polls was only five seats less than the current biggest parties (the VVD the PvdA and the CDA) combined (Ibid.). These polls are most likely not an adequate reflection of the actual elections. However, it shows how the national mood is shifting towards being supportive of radical anti-immigrant sentiment. To maintain credibility and public support, it is likely that the political agenda of the national government is influenced by this, leading the coalition towards preferring tough policy on immigrants and asylum seekers, especially with the eye on the upcoming national parliamentary elections of 2017.
The national policy: two administrative agreements
Out of this sober policy frame, a policy was formed which was outlined in two administrative agreements. The sober notion of the asylum reception policy can be found back in this agreement. First however, it is important to take notice of the way the administrative agreement was formed, to attain a better understanding of the multi-level setting in which the national policy is organized, formed and transferred to the municipalities.
Policy agenda: the vertical coordination mechanism
After the debacle in Oranje, it became clear that a good cooperation and coordination between state and municipality was key in finding solutions to accommodate asylum seekers and to avoid future unrest. After the agreement had passed parliament, Dijkhoff started the dialogue about the new national policy with the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) to clearly define the role of the COA, the state and the municipalities in this new agreement (Interview VNG). The policy agreement (Het Bestuursakkoord Verhoogde Asielinstroom) that came out of this dialogue was published in November 2015 and ratified by the VNG a month later (Interview VNG). This agreement, and the subsequent agreement that was published on April 28th, set out the asylum reception and integration policy. These agreements also define the roles of the municipalities and the national government on these policies, and the way which the implementation would be coordinated (‘Bestuursakkoord’ 2015, 2).
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The administrative agreement aimed at a ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ approach between state and municipalities in solving the asylum reception problem (‘Bestuusakkoord’ 2015, 2). This might suggest that this agreement acknowledges the multi-level character of the issue. Indeed, with this agreement, municipalities and the national government were set out to find a workable way to cope with the influx of asylum seekers together and the important position of the municipalities for the success of asylum policy was acknowledged (Interview VNG). It also recognizes that problems will likely occur on the local level, and therefore an intensive coordination and cooperation between the national government, the provinces, COA and the local governments is highlighted (‘Bestuursakkoord’ 2015, 2). However, to the contrary to what a shoulder-to-shoulder approach may suggest, should the collaboration between the VNG and the national government not be interpreted as the start of a new form of vertical coordination on asylum reception policy (Interview OTAV). The COA and Dijkhoff indeed explicitly acknowledge their reliance on municipalities for finding suitable locations for the establishment of new (temporary) asylum reception centers. But the role of the local governments is still limited in the way that these governments can only suggest a certain location to the COA that they deem to be suitable to be used as an asylum reception center. Thus bottom-up coordination goes as far as that municipalities get into contact with the COA for the allocation of a location for a new asylum reception center. In doing so, municipal governments indeed have some say in the decision making over where an asylum reception center gets established. However, with regard to the size and the way things are managed within the centers, the national policy is indisputable. And if the suggested center does not fit within the specifications as defined by Dijkhoff, the suggested location will not be used as an asylum reception center. Dijkhoff has the final say in the decision-making; and the COA has to execute the asylum policy in accordance to the administrative agreement (‘Handreiking’ 2015, 7). And thus, even with this new agreement, the policy agenda still prescribes a strong central policy coordination structure, which is distinctive for a centralist multi-level setting, as seen in Table 1. The additional guide of the agreement, published by the Ministry of Justice, prescribes that from that moment on, a new asylum reception center is only established in agreement with local governments (‘Handreiking’ 2015, 7). However, if deemed necessary, Dijkhoff still holds the authority to force a decision on through by opening an asylum reception center without consent of a local government (Van den Dool 2015; Interview VNG).
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After a location is established, the asylum reception center will be run by the COA. So apart from having some degree of control over the location where an asylum reception center is placed, this agreement ‘has no consequences for the responsibilities of the local governments,’ regarding the policy inside the asylum reception centers once they are established (‘Handreiking’ 2015, 8). There is coordination between the COA and the municipalities after the location is opened, but this only addresses practical matters as managing volunteers, or supplying medical services (Ibid. 7).
The administrative agreement: types of asylum reception centers
The administrative agreement furthermore addresses a wide scale of issues, out of which a few deserve attention for this thesis. To understand the nuances of the policy agreement, it is important first to elaborate on the different types of asylum reception centers that exist within the Dutch asylum reception policy. The first form is the permanent asylum reception center. These are centers that are owned by the COA and were typically opened before the recent influx of asylum seekers. The asylum procedure starts from the point that an asylum seeker resides in one of these permanent centers (Website COA ‘Soorten opvang’). The second type of centers are the crisis emergency reception centers. In the crisis situation, that started in the first half of 2015, beds for asylum seekers had to be arranged immediately. Therefore, municipalities had to open up crisis buildings to host these asylum seekers. Many municipalities have access to readily available crisis buildings which are to be used in cases of national disaster. Therefore, when large amounts of asylum seekers started arriving, these locations could be opened quickly (Ibid.). Unless a municipality decides differently, these centers are opened for only 72 hours, after which they would close again. After these 72 hours, the asylum seekers are then usually brought over to another temporary location, until a spot becomes vacant in the regular asylum reception center (Ibid.). Municipalities were responsible for providing and allocating these centers. At the moment of handing in this thesis, all crisis emergency centers are closed, nor are they the subject of this research (‘Uitwerkingsakkoord’ 2016). These centers have however played an important role in the learning processes on immigration and the small scale accommodating of asylum seekers in the municipalities of Heusden and Boxtel. This will be elaborated on later.
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National ‘sober’ policy frame in practice: large sober reception
The third is the emergency asylum reception center (EC). These centers, the debate over the size of these centers and the integration policy within these centers, are the subject of this thesis. Dijkhoff prefers that the EC’s accommodate large groups of asylum seekers. As seen above, the COA has housed asylum seekers in large scale centers since its establishment in 1994. The sizes of these centers had traditionally aimed at having about 1,500+ beds (‘Bestuursakkoord’, 2015). This aim indeed sounds extraordinarily high, especially because within the current debate, centers in which 300 asylum seekers are hosted are still being perceived as ‘large scale’ (Interview Heusden). However the COA was in fact erected as a reaction to the failure of the small scale asylum reception (Doomernik 2008; Matthijer 2000; Smets & Ten Kate 2007). As said above, these centers had turned out to be easier to manage and control and more cost- effective (Doomernik 2008). Also, some argue that a political intentional side-effect of the size and the proximity of civilization where these centers are often settled is to impede the integration process of asylum seekers that have not yet been granted asylum (Smets & Ten Kate, 2007; Leerkens & Scholten, 2016, 20). Within this tradition, Dijkhoff and COA aim for preferably large scale centers (with a capacity between 300-1,500+) (‘Bestuursakkoord’ 2015). It became clear that finding empty buildings suitable for housing 1,500 asylum seekers would be harder than expected. Until October 2015, the minimum capacity for an EC was set on 600 asylum seekers, emphasizing the controllability and cost-efficiency of large locations in comparison to several small locations (Geuze 2015). Dijkhoff adjusted this minimum in the administrative agreement to 300. Rianne Lannoye, a VNG policy maker that took part in the negotiation processes suspected that the experience in Oranje influenced this decision (Interview VNG). Dijkhoff has held rigidly to his minimum of 300 asylum seekers per center since. But there are two exceptions to this policy. The housing of unaccompanied minors has traditionally been done on a small scale. During the crisis period, children have been accommodated in large centers (Pen 2016) . However, it has been the COA’s policy to accommodate unaccompanied minors in small groups of about 20 children per location (Website COA ‘Locaties voor Jongeren’). The second exception has just come into existence by the virtue of the administrative agreement of November 2015. These exceptions are
30 satellite centers. For satellite centers the minimum capacity is set at 200 asylum seekers. These satellites can however only be opened within the proximity of a permanent asylum reception center. This satellite center would utilize the provisions and services of this permanent center, and thereby it is still considered to be cost-efficient and controllable enough for housing only 200 asylum seekers (‘Bestuursakkoord’ 2015).
National ‘sober’ policy frame in practice: asylum seeker integration
The second important policy that is set out in the administrative agreement of November 2015 concerns the integration process of asylum seekers. This subject was finally decided upon in the additional administrative agreement that was published in April 2016. On the grounds of international agreements, asylum seekers under the age of 18 have the right to receive a fitting education, both primary and secondary (‘Uitwerkingsakkoord’ 2016, 4). With the additional agreement, an extra 500 million euros has been promised to municipal governments to finance the integration process and language lessons for status holders (Ibid.). Different, more restrictive, rules apply for adult asylum seekers that are awaiting their process in the EC’s and that are residing in a permanent center. Coming out of the institutionalized policy legacy, restrictive laws and policies on asylum seekers have prescribed that these people are not eligible to work (Website Rijksoverheid ‘Mogen asielzoekers werken?’). Only when an asylum seeker enters the asylum process – thus when this person is already out of the EC –, he or she is allowed to work for a maximum of 24 weeks per year. However, an asylum seeker would have to apply for a special permit to do so (Leerkens & Scholten 2016, 20). (Website Rijksoverheid ‘Mogen asielzoekers werken?’). Doing internships is not allowed for asylum seekers living in EC’s either (Website Rijksoverheid ‘Mogen asielzoekers stage lopen?’).
Sober, no integration and emphasizing temporariness
But in the new debate over asylum integration these regulations were questioned. It became clear in the published statistics of the IND that the largest part of asylum seekers came from Syria and Eritrea, as well as from other war-torn Middle-Eastern countries. These people have a big chance on attaining asylum (CBS 2016; Interview IND). In 2015, 70 per cent of all processed applications turned out to be cases of legitimate refugees and these people were
31 granted status (Ibid.). And so the question rose if it would be desirable to start facilitating the integration of asylum seekers from the start (Fragment ‘Akkoord over integratie’ 2016). The second administrative agreement was the answer to this discussion. In this agreement it was decided upon that asylum seekers that are awaiting their procedure in the EC’s should not be granted governmentally funded language lessons, nor should asylum seekers in the regular centers attain language lessons unless it is almost certain that they will be granted asylum (‘Uitwerkingsakkoord’ 2016). Thus asylum seekers above the age of 18 are not eligible for attaining professional language lessons, although they are allowed to attain language lessons from volunteers (Ibid.). Both the PvdA Minister for Integration Asscher as the VVD Minister for Immigration Dijkhoff support this policy. Asscher supports integration and language lessons for asylum seekers but emphasizes that this should only start after an asylum seeker is accepted (Fragment 'Akkoord over integratie’ 2016). He states that it is not desirable to provide professional language lessons to all asylum seekers, because according to his more recent statistics, a large part of asylum seekers comes from countries out of which asylum seekers are not eligible for asylum, for example from Albania. “We have to stay aware that we are not building up a circus in which we are providing language lessons to Albanian people that come here to pursue their fortune. (Ibid.).”xvii The CBS indeed shows that in March and April a large part of the new asylum seekers are coming from Albania or other countries that are considered safe and thus people coming from these will most likely not attain refugee status. However, even in May – and probably the months thereafter too – Syrians have been applying for asylum in the Netherlands (CBS 2016). And until February 2016, the vast majority of asylum applications were from Syrians and Eritreans and these groups make up for the largest part of the residents of the EC’s (CBS 2016). There people are most likely still awaiting their procedure in one of the EC’s. Besides, it has been announced in April 2016 that the period that people have to wait in an EC before they are transferred to a regular center can take up to fifteen months, instead of the earlier estimated six months (Website IND 2016). Thus, in the current policy, these people are put under the same umbrella as alleged Albanian ‘fortune-hunters’ – who currently take a smaller part of the group than the Syrians and Eritreans which will probably get accepted. However, because of this rhetoric, it is found undesirable to finance language lessons for any asylum seeker during the waiting period in the EC’s, which by now could still take a full year. Dijkhoff takes in a similar standpoint regarding the integration of asylum seekers. He stated not to find it desirable to provide language lessons to all people in asylum reception
32 centers, because this would send out the wrong signal to asylum seekers concerning their future stay (‘Dijkhoff: geen taalles’ 2015). Also, in accordance to the overall unwillingness of the VVD in taking in asylum seekers and the efforts to curtail the asylum influx altogether, the spokesperson of Zijlstra emphasized that language lessons and a quick integration would be undesirable, because it would suggest that asylum seekers are to stay indefinitely. “It should not be their [the asylum seekers’] goal to come for a permanent residence permit. Instead, we want to emphasize the temporary character of their stay”xviii (Rusman 2015). Thus within his point of view, it should not be promoted to make asylum seekers stay permanently and the policy should even emphasize the temporariness of the asylum seekers’ stay. If they are granted asylum, they might stay here, but they might return as well in the end. And if they are not, they should not have been given any implication that they might eventually stay. Opposition parties D66 and GroenLinks have continuously opposed the restrictive policy of the government. According to the members of these parties it is of great importance to immediately start with the integration process by providing education and to give asylum seekers awaiting their procedure the possibility to work (De Vries 2015; Website GroenLinks ‘Vluchtelingen’). These two parties may be small in parliament. In the city of Utrecht these parties however are the two largest parties and, as will be elaborated on below, it might be unsurprising that this vision is loudly heard in the government of Utrecht.
Conclusion
Historically, migrant and asylum regulations were introduced to regulate the influx of migrants and to exclude unwanted migrants, so that they would not illegitimately take advantage of the country’s social welfare services and recourses. With the birth of the COA in 1994, asylum reception policy has become a highly centralized issue, which is governed in a top-down manner by the national government. The State Secretary of Justice decides upon the policy, and the COA executes this policy. Local governments have little to no say in asylum reception policy – and this policy has been maintained in the recent update of asylum reception policy. An update of the policy was necessary because of the current influx of asylum seekers into the EU and the Netherlands. The national political agenda has since the turn of the millennium been dominated by a trend in which politicians feel urged to act tough and quick on immigration issues. This preoccupancy on the political agenda is found again in
33 the recent update on asylum reception policy, during the problem indication and most strikingly in the sudden compromise by which the governmental agreement that was made. The PvdA felt urged to respond to an event of public unrest and agreed to pass a sober asylum reception policy through parliament against its initial standpoints in October 2015. The national problem frame on asylum reception comes from the rhetoric in which asylum seekers are understood as people that are possible ‘fortune-hunters,’ until they are proved to be legitimate refugees. Out of this problem frame, policy emerged that that reinforced the existing restricting asylum reception policy. The policy frame promotes a ‘sober’ asylum reception policy. This sober policy frame prescribes that the accommodating of asylum seekers should take place in large scale reception centers in which a sober lifestyle is promoted and conditions for integration should not be governmentally facilitated. Language lessons and small scale centers are said to be found undesirable by the COA and Dijkhoff, because this would be less cost-effective and less manageable and large, sober centers. Another reason that comes forward for why asylum seekers should not attain welfare and should not be invested in, is because asylum seekers are seen as potential ‘fortune-hunters’, and thus it is uncertain if these people will stay in the Netherlands. Immediate investment in asylum seekers is also said to be undesirable because this is thought to attract unwanted asylum seekers such as Albanians. In fact, the temporariness of the asylum seekers’ stay in the Netherlands should be emphasized during their stay.
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3. Boxtel and Heusden: Local policy frame of societal harmony
In February 2016 a dissident voice was heard on the local level. Dijkhoff had been expressing his discontent over the lack of effort that municipalities had been putting in allocating locations for new reception centers and houses for accepted asylum seekers (Stokmans 2016). To keep up with the continuing influx of asylum seekers, every province had been designated to produce housing and reception centers for a fixed amount of asylum seekers (Ibid.). Especially the municipalities in the province of Noord-Brabant, were said to be slow and reluctant in this matter (‘Helft Brabantse gemeenten’ 2015). A large shortage of centers was expected by the national government if centers would not be opened soon (Stokmans 2016). Jan Hamming and Mark Buijs, the mayors of respectively Heusden and Boxtel – two small municipalities in the province of Noord-Brabant – voiced their concern on this matter. These two mayors have shown strong leadership, and politicized the issue from the local level. They pushed their local problem forward as an issue in need of local-specific solutions, by which they tried for a localist governance coordination structure to emerge through agenda setting. They were not only concerned with the country’s rising need for new asylum reception centers; also were they questioning the current asylum reception policy frame as a whole. The mayors published their thoughts in an open letter that got published in De Volkskrant on February 22nd (Buijs & Hamming 2016). In this letter, Buijs and Hamming stated that they would happily produce asylum reception centers, and house accepted asylum seekers, but not on the terms that were set out by the national government. They said that the national sober asylum reception policy “fails to address the human dimension, and gives no notion to humanity and charity” (Ibid.).xix Therefore they opted an alternative policy: “We think that the solution lies in small scale reception of asylum seekers, which has attention for integration from the very start” (Ibid.).xx
Political agenda
But where does this different frame on asylum reception policy come from? Hamming and Buijs are in fact party members of the PvdA respectively the VVD, and so it might seem odd that their opinions differ so much from the national policy which has been lain out by the same two parties in government. However, the both city councils predominantly consist of local parties. On the political agenda, the scope of the policies in these cities has, according to
35 the interviews, traditionally been concerned with addressing problems from a local perspective, instead of being affected too much by the national political ideologies (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). Therefore, the problem and the policy frames were aimed at local-specific variations of the asylum reception issues.
Problem indication regarding scale: unrest in other cities
The problem indication regarding the current size of asylum reception centers emerged in a period of nation-wide protest in Dutch cities and villages in response to the opening or planned opening of new EC’s and permanent centers. In November 2015, the municipal government of Otterloo had agreed upon opening an EC which would accommodate 600 asylum seekers. On a participation evening, protesters had been infuriated. They did not want an asylum reception center in their city, especially not one that would host as many asylum seekers as planned. Signs were held up saying “100 Okay, 600 No” xxi (‘Burgemeester zwicht’ 2015), indicating that some people would be supportive towards the erection of a smaller center. Because of the protest, the municipal government withdrew its decision and cancelled the opening of the EC. In Geldermalsen protests emerged too, as a reaction to the plans of the municipal government to open a center for 1,500 asylum seekers. These protests deeply escalated, and stones were thrown at the city hall. The city council even had to evacuate their office. This decision was withdrawn as well (‘Grimmige azc-protesten’ 2016). In the city of Heesch a dead pig was hung in a tree at the location where the city had planned to open an EC as a sign of protest in January 2016 (Back 2016). Many similar events occurred in reaction to municipal decisions over opening new centers.
New policy alternatives through experience
In this violent climate, the two mayors of Boxtel and Heusden came forward with an approach that in their opinion addressed the needs and objections of civilians of small municipalities in a more suitable way. Instead of opening large scale centers on the terms of national policy, they wished that local governments would attain more power in governing these centers (Buijs & Hamming 2016). Their believe in the viability of this alternative policy was formed during a process of learning. These two municipalities opened crisis centers to temporarily put up groups of asylum seekers during the height of the asylum seeker influx in
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September 2015. Boxtel had designated a location that could house 50 asylum seekers; the crisis center in Heusden had a capacity for 150 (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). The COA had allocated unaccompanied minors from Eritrea and Syria to these locations (De Vries 2016a). Having seen the horrible condition these children were in, the mayor of Boxtel decided not to close the crisis center after the customary 72 hours and thus kept these asylum seekers accommodated in Boxtel (Interview Boxtel). The government of Heusden did the same when asylum seekers arrived at its center (Interview Heusden). Buijs speaks of a success story with regard to the integration of these children, as well as the way they were received in the community (Interview Boxtel). Within a rapid pace, large groups of volunteers had surrounded themselves around the asylum reception centers in both municipalities. The attendance of volunteers was so large in Heusden that the amount of available volunteers at one point exceeded the amount of asylum seekers in the centers (Interview Heusden). By keeping asylum seekers close to the community, a quick understanding emerged between both groups (Interview Boxtel). After having gone through the application process in a nearby asylum reception center, all asylum seekers that had been brought under in these cities in the crisis centers had returned to the same city, where they now live as status holders (Interview Boxtel).
Policy alternative: small scale centers for small communities
This learning process made the municipal governments of these cities discover two things: one, by receiving asylum seekers on a small scale, there had hardly been any complaints from within the city’s communities. This stood in shrill contrast to the way things had gone in neighboring cities, where large centers, as illustrated above, had all too often stumbled upon civil protest (Interview Heusden). Secondly, by keeping the asylum seekers in the same city and by surrounding a vast community around them, the asylum seekers had quickly integrated in the city (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). It had turned out, that housing small groups of asylum seekers was both beneficial for the community as for the asylum seekers themselves (Interview Boxtel). So in the start of 2016, when the asylum centers which had served as the initial crisis centers were empty again, the mayors of Boxtel and Heusden wanted to host new small groups of asylum seekers. They wanted that the municipalities would get full responsibility
37 over the asylum seekers that they would take into their centers (De Vries 2016b). The alternative policy frame that came out of their local agendas, rejected the national policy on housing and integration of asylum seekers, because facilitating integration and maintaining societal harmony is left out. “The State has delegated municipal governments to bear the responsibility over accepted asylum seekers. However, after two years of standing still, integration will become a serious problem”xxii (De Vries 2016a). Instead of waiting until the outcome of the procedure, these mayors wished to facilitate the integration of asylum seekers from day one, by facilitating professional language lessons and giving them a chance to work. The mayors are of the opinion that by doing so, asylum seekers that will eventually stay will have a better chance of integrating and thus have a bigger chance of becoming a valuable and participating part of the community (Interview Boxtel).
Local policy frame: societal harmony
Without pressing for the abolishment of large reception centers altogether, the mayors of Boxtel and Heusden asked the national government in their letter to give municipal governments the power to interpret asylum reception policy more freely, by which the municipal governments themselves could address local-specific problems and opportunities regarding asylum reception (Buijs & Hamming 2016). They offered to start a pilot for small scale asylum reception in their cities. For the municipal governments of Boxtel (34,000 inhabitants) and Heusden (50,000 inhabitants) several small scale centers were deemed to be addressing the local issues best, according to the calculations and inquiries that the two municipal governments had done. Both municipalities governments had gone into discussion with their inhabitants, to see which locations would be fit to open new reception center, and also to inquire what the maximum acceptable amount of asylum seekers within their municipalities would be (Interview Heusden). The municipal governments had discovered in these inquiries that the people in their municipalities were “afraid of large asylum reception centers, but support small centers” (Interview Heusden).xxiii Thus out of these inquiries, the governments of Boxtel and Heusden had come up with their plan to house 250, respectively 400 asylum seekers in several small locations with capacities to accommodate between 50 and a 100 asylum seekers (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). Apart from the size of the centers, their policy conflicted with national interests as well with regard to the integration of asylum seekers. Hamming and Buijs wanted to
38 immediately facilitate language lessons, activities and provide working-opportunities for the asylum seekers in their municipalities (Interview Heusden). Buijs said it made no sense that the national government opposes to this. “It is an enormous mistake not to start the integration of these people immediately” xxiv (Interview Buijs). The spokesperson of the mayor of Heusden adds to this that both the community and the asylum seekers themselves benefit from a quick integration process. “The COA is pointing at monetary issues. Indeed, the way we want to accommodate asylum seekers is more expensive at first, but in two years it will definitely pay off. Well-integrated newcomers can eventually fulfill a societal role.”xxv (Interview Heusden). Furthermore, Hamming and Buijs are concerned over the future, and how badly integrated refugees could affect the societal harmony within their municipalities, instead of being concerned with advocating a political agendas that aims at sending out a message to deflect economic fortune-hunters. “We’ve had previous experience with taking in badly integrated status holders. And that really caused some challenges in the community. Waiting with the integration process for the initial months drastically increases the chance for these people get stuck in welfare support, or worse: they might even start causing trouble” xxvi (Interview Buijs). Out of their problem frame on future integration, the municipal governments seem to be concerned with the people that will stay, instead of the people that are to be excluded. An important part of the policy plan of Hamming and Buijs for facilitating integration involves keeping continuity in the region wherein asylum seekers are accommodated. Hamming and Buijs defied the way in which asylum seekers at that time were being constantly moved from one EC to another for a period up to 15 months, after which they would be located to a regular asylum reception center to start their procedure – which could take another 8 months – only to be located to another random city once accepted (Interview Boxtel). Alternatively, they wished to accommodate asylum seekers in the way they had done during the crisis period. This was by keeping asylum seekers in one certain municipality until they could go into procedure, where they would come back after being accepted in the procedure (Ibid.). The idea behind this is that the asylum seeker would already be integrated in the community and would be used to the environment. According to Buijs, this continuity enhanced the chance of successful integration. According to him, the Eritrean girls that were accommodated in Boxtel, already felt partially a ‘Boxtelaar’ after the months that they had resided in the EC. According to the mayors, asylum seekers would lose all their networks and their notion of belonging when they would allocated to another city after being accepted in
39 procedure: “In a different city they would again feel alienated and the integration process would have to start all over again”xxvii(Interview Buijs).
Diverting policy frames and agenda setting
In order to overturn the centralized policy agenda, and to resolve the way in which the national policy failed to address the locally perceived problems, the mayors politicized the issue on the local level and framed their issues as local problems. In an attempt to push their alternative policy frame through national government, in order to put it into practice within the rigid top-down coordinated national policy, the mayors of Boxtel and Heusden stood up as policy entrepreneurs and went into dialogue with the COA. It was suggested in De Volkskrant of February 24th 2016, that the COA had been positive towards the plans of Buijs and Hamming. The agency had announced that they did not have the luxury to decline certain options before taking them into serious consideration (De Vries 2016a). However, the plans within the policy frame of Hamming and Buijs did not fit in the terms of the administrative agreement. The minimum limit of 300 had been politically decided upon and can only be altered by Dijkhoff (Ibid.). Neither was the plan of the two mayors concerning their asylum seeker integration policy – immediate access to work, internships and governmentally funded education – compatible with the political assumption that asylum seekers are possible fortune-hunters and thus should not be invested in until it is certain that a person is a legitimate asylum seeker. After more than a month of uncertainty, Dijkhoff rejected the policy plan of the two mayors, by stating: “I’m a big fan of small scale housing, but reserve that for people with status. If only 5,000 asylum seekers would annually enter our country, one might consider small locations, but we don’t have that luxury now. It [the influx of asylum seekers] is much higher.”xxviii With this statement, Dijkhoff stuck to his policy of housing a minimum 300 asylum seekers per center (‘Dijkhoff: proef kleinschalige opvang’ 2016).
Policy alignment, although frames still partially conflict
In discussions between Dijkhoff and the two mayors, Buijs and Hamming had accepted to no longer pursue a pilot for small scale housing (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). An important reason for this was that other municipal governments had voiced their concerns
40 over the plans of Hamming and Buijs (Ibid; Interview VNG). These governments feared that changing the rules could possibly affect the public support in their municipalities where they had already made plans for opening large scale asylum seeker centers (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). Dijkhoff had also repeated that small scale housing would be too costly and harder to manage, although the municipal government of Boxtel had countered this argument by stating to be willing to compensate the extra costs out of the municipality’s budget (Interview Boxtel). The deliberations however converted the mayors and made them comply with national policy (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). Instead of opting for small scale asylum reception centers, the two municipalities made new plans that are compatible with the administrative agreement regarding the size of the centers. Thus, the asylum reception policy agenda in multi-level settings is still controlled by a centralist ideal type of government, in which a clear top-down relation between the two levels of government controls the policy coordination (Scholten 2015). The spokesperson of Hamming elaborates on this alignment of frames: “We thought: we can do everything to get it our way, but then again, try and tell those refugees that are waiting at the border of Greece or Macedonia that we are still in deliberation. In the end we just wanted the same, which is giving asylum seekers a safe place to live”xxix (Interview Heusden). And so the policy controversy between the two levels of government on asylum reception center size had been resolved. In the new plans, Boxtel will accommodate 150 unaccompanied minors in three small centers (Interview Boxtel). The municipality of Heusden will house 50 unaccompanied minors and will open a satellite center for 200 asylum seekers. These plans all fit within the national policy. However, even after this agreement, the frames of these municipal governments had not converged entirely. Allegedly, plans are being made to facilitate and finance immediate integration of asylum seekers that are planned to be accommodated in these municipalities (Interview Boxtel; Interview Heusden). The centers have not yet been opened and concrete plans are still to be made. Therefore it is still unclear how this integration will be facilitated – within the national guidelines, or defecting from national policy –, and thus future research has to point out if conflicting messages will eventually be sent out and if decoupling policy will occur between the two levels of government.
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4. Utrecht: framing asylum seekers as ‘Future Citizens’
Not only small municipal governments have voiced their discontent with the national policy on asylum reception. Large cities are confronted with policy challenges with regard to the coming of asylum seekers and the opening of new asylum reception centers too. Utrecht has taken the lead in creating an alternative asylum reception policy to address local specific needs and problems. This city is the only one of the four large Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam and Utrecht) in which a permanent reception center is currently established. This permanent center has housed 450 asylum seekers for about two decades. When Dijkhoff appealed on all Dutch municipal governments to open new centers, the government of Utrecht responded to this request and started looking for new possible locations. According to the city’s planning, an additional permanent center will be opened in 2018, which is planned to have a capacity to accommodate 600 asylum seekers. Temporarily, the city of Utrecht has erected a satellite center in May 2016, which can accommodate 250 people and will stay open for two years. In January 2016, plans were being made to open an EC which would house 400-600 people (Interview Braat). However, the problem that the city was facing in the advent of this new EC would be much more complex than just taking in new people into the city. While making plans for opening the EC, the government of Utrecht was confronted with some particular challenges. Because of the an absence of a generally accepted asylum reception and integration policy frame on the two levels of government, an intractable policy controversy emerged. To overcome this, a new policy frame was formed in Utrecht and new paths of coordination in multi-level settings were pursued.
Local problems: fear for testosterone bombs in Overvecht
In the search for the new location of the EC, the city’s government was restricted in terms of the minimum capacity of the center, due to national policy as prescribed in the administrative agreement. Because of this, the city’s government had limited options out of which it could to choose a new location for the EC (Interview Podt). One of the options that came up was an empty office building in the poor, ‘working-class neighborhood’ of Overvecht. In January, the city’s government and the COA had decided upon this building to become the new EC (Interview Podt). This center was initially planned to open in June 2016, but the opening has been postponed to September 2016 (Interview Braat).
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A large part of this neighborhood was not all too pleased with this decision. A concerning illustration of this can be seen an episode of the television show Danny Zoekt Problemen on NPO 3, which was broadcasted on the 25th of May 2016. In this episode television-host Danny Ghosen interviewed several people in this neighborhood about their opinion on the planned new center (‘Danny zoekt problemen’ 2016). He speaks to a part of this neighborhood which was welcoming towards the city’s plans. However, another large part he speaks to was deeply worried and angry about the announcement that the EC was to be opened in their neighborhood. Some interviewees even said to be willing to burn down the planned location (Ibid.). The main source of anger of the opponents is thought to be the result of an accumulated discontent and feeling of being neglected by the government (Interview Podt). These people think that their poor neighborhood already faces enough social-economic problems, and thus cannot fathom the city’s decision to place the center specifically in their neighborhood (‘Danny zoekt problemen’ 2016; Interview Podt). Some other interviewed people in Overvecht say to fear for their safety because of the possible large groups of men or ‘Testosterone Bombs’ that might be housed in this center. They say to expect and fear similar events as happened in Köln on New Year’s Day (‘Danny zoekt problemen’ 2016).
The city’s political agenda
This public unrest pressured the city’s government into finding solutions to address this local problem (Interview Braat). Fact of the matter was that the government of Utrecht had decided that it wanted to take in more asylum seekers, and due to national policy this location in Overvecht was found to be the best and possibly the only viable option to open a new center in. In the search for solutions for this pressing problem, an opportunity was made to link this issue to another agenda point in Utrecht, namely the desire to (immediately) integrate asylum seekers (Interview Braat). The city council of Utrecht had been looking at ways to stimulate immediate integration and self-development of asylum seekers (Interview Podt). As was the case in Boxtel and Heusden, the mayor of Utrecht is a party member of a coalition party in government, namely the VVD. However, the largest parties in the current city council of Utrecht are D66 and GroenLinks. And the alderman that holds the portfolio on asylum seekers in Utrecht, Kees Diepeveen, is a GroenLinks-member too. As pointed out in the chapter on the national policy frame, these two central and left-wing parliamentary parties
43 hold a benevolent stance towards plans for the immediate integration of asylum seekers by granting language lessons and facilitating opportunities for these people to work from the start. Thus, the government of Utrecht linked its will to immediately integrate asylum seekers to finding a suitable policy for the public unrest in Overvecht (Interview Braat). The political agenda of Utrecht has, similar to the agendas of Boxtel and Heusden, been of a pragmatic sort. These governments address problems in a local-specific way, instead of confronting problems on immigration in the highly politicized manner in the way that this is done in the national political agenda. Utrecht has a history of pragmatically approaching immigrant and alien issues. According to Kos e.a. (2015, 7) Utrecht has worked out of a “combination of humanitarian considerations with a pragmatic approach” towards immigrants and failed asylum seekers (Ibid.). Their study shows how the left-leaning government of Utrecht has resisted implementing restricting anti-alien policies that were set out by the national government (Ibid. 17). Utrecht, like many other cities, was confronted with failed asylum seekers illegally residing in the city. These people were known not to be likely to leave, as was the wish of the national government. Municipal actors felt urged to shelter these people, because the presence of these people living on the streets was being associated with public order disturbances (Ibid, 16). Being confronted with these concrete problems, the municipal government felt compelled and considered to be obliged to act and thus shelter these people. By doing so, Utrecht took the lead in sheltering the rejected asylum seekers and other unwanted aliens in contrast to what national policy ordered (Ibid. 7).
Pragmatic and humanitarian political agenda
Utrecht’s policy on asylum integration similarly comes for part out of these practical, as well as humanitarian considerations (Interview Braat). Out of a humanitarian point of view Diepeveen for example argues that the current national asylum policy severely disturbs the well-being and mental health of asylum seekers. According to him, traumas cannot be processed or may even worsen in the sober centers and by the constant moving of asylum seekers (Huisman 2016; De Wever 2016). Out of a pragmatic standpoint, immediate integration is deemed desirable because it is thought that the societal costs of badly integrated refugees will eventually be much higher than those of refugees that already started integration during the lengthy asylum procedure (Interview Podt; Interview Braat). It is assumed that
44 immediately integrated asylum seekers would eventually have to rely less on social services and have a larger chance of being of a valuable contribution to society because they will more probably find a job and participate in society in general (Interview Podt). Therefore, investment in integration of asylum seekers is pushed forward by the government of Utrecht (Ibid.).
Framing asylum seekers as ‘Future Citizens’
A new frame of the asylum seekers emerged out of these propositions. Instead of highlighting the chance of an asylum seeker being an economic fortune-hunter in the way they are framed at the national level, the government of Utrecht frames asylum seekers as ‘future citizens’ – a term that was taken over from the government of Barcelona (Interview Braat). The government of Utrecht has a close relationship with this Spanish city as well as with other European cities’ governments, with which it cooperates and share information for horizontal policy learning (Ibid.). This is an entirely different ‘problem’ frame of asylum seekers than that of Dijkhoff and the national government. In fact, it seems that the national government frames asylum seekers as problems, while the government of Utrecht frames them as opportunities. In the rhetoric of the national government, asylum seekers are to be understood as people that are possible ‘fortune-hunters,’ until they are proven to be legitimate refugees. This frame had led to a sober policy frame, out of which it is argued that asylum seekers should not attain welfare and should not be invested in, because it is uncertain if these people will stay in the Netherlands. Therefore providing services as language lessons are not deemed worth the investment because of the possibility that an asylum seeker could be refused status in the Netherlands. To the contrary, Utrecht frames asylum seekers as future citizens, who should be addressed all too differently. Framing asylum seekers as future citizens does not imply that these people are necessarily future citizens of Utrecht yet. Within this frame, the city’s government does still acknowledge that the legitimacy of a person’s stay has to be decided upon in the asylum procedure (Interview Braat). However, this frame refers to an asylum seeker as a future citizen of either Utrecht, or of his or her country of origin if he or she is not deemed to be a legitimate refugee. In both cases it is thought however that it is desirable to invest in these people for their future personal development, for these people to be of a
45 positive contribution to one of both societies (Interview Braat; Interview Podt; De Wever 2016).
Alternative Policy frame: Inclusive policy
Because of the dominance of a progressive left-leaning city council, the framing of an asylum seeker as a ‘future citizen’ and the turmoil and protests in Overvecht that demanded resolution, the agenda for the emergence of an alternative policy frame was set. The policy on asylum reception that emerged in Utrecht was called an ‘inclusive policy’ xxx of asylum reception (Interview Braat; Interview Podt). The inclusive policy comes out of a pragmatic and humanitarian policy frame aimed at fostering societal harmony and social cohesion by facilitating conditions for integration and self-development of asylum seekers, while simultaneously investing in the neighborhood of Overvecht. Coming out of a similar policy frame as the one of the previous case, this inclusive policy shows quite some similarities with the alternative asylum reception policy of Boxtel and Heusden (Ibid; De Wever 2016). The inclusive policy that was set out by the government of Utrecht deviates from the national sober policy and the usual way reception centers are organized (Interview Braat). In doing so, the municipality of Utrecht wishes to step out of the passive role that municipalities have in the current asylum reception policy, and to take in an active role in asylum reception policy making. As is said above, it had been underlined in the administrative agreement that municipalities do not bare a larger responsibility in asylum reception and integration than allocating locations. Coordinating the centers and executing asylum reception policy has traditionally been reserved to the COA. This policy frame, as is the case for the policy of Boxtel and Heusden, appears to be intractable with the national policy. Coming out of a problem frame which is concerned with the integration of asylum seekers and their future integration of these people in the city of Utrecht, the local policy demands immediate integration and investment in the facilitation of integration. The city’s new policy is however construed in a peculiar and strategic way.
Policy entrepreneurialism and policy plans on language and work
The inclusive policy encompasses several factors to facilitate self-development and the self- efficacy of asylum seekers, as well as of the people of Overvecht. Utrecht’s first condition for
46 facilitating the successful integration of asylum seekers is to keep asylum seekers that arrive in Utrecht in this city throughout the asylum procedure, and thereafter. So when an asylum seeker has resided in an asylum reception center in Utrecht, he or she will be offered housing in Utrecht after being accepted in the procedure. This condition, which was also part of the policy plan of Boxtel and Heusden, is to create continuity in the integration process. After being accepted in the procedure, the asylum seeker already had the time to create a network and is likely to feel part of the neighborhood that he or she lives in. This is expected to increase the likelihood of a successful integration and chances on finding work and thus participating in society (Interview Braat). Also, by keeping asylum seekers in Utrecht after they have been accepted in their procedure, Utrecht will be able to bear the fruits of the investments that the city makes for the integration and self-development of asylum seekers (Interview Podt; Interview Braat). The Utrecht School of Economics of the University of Utrecht and the Volksuniversiteit will provide courses on entrepreneurship for both the people of Overvecht and the asylum seekers living in the reception center in this neighborhood (Huisman 2016). Lessons on entrepreneurship are deemed most to be important in the frame wherein asylum seekers are being considered future citizens (Interview Braat). Learning about entrepreneurship is expected to be useful for asylum seekers in their future lives in either the Netherlands or in the country of origin (Ibid.). To circumvent objections by the national government on the notion of ‘giving the wrong idea’ by teaching asylum seekers the Dutch language, the municipality of Utrecht included provision of English lessons for asylum seekers (as well as the people of Overvecht) instead of Dutch language lessons (Ibid.). A common language is deemed to be a necessity for integration and it is also thought to help in becoming a successful entrepreneur, in the Netherlands as well as in any other country. This policy comes out of the frame wherein asylum seekers are seen as future citizens, instead of as possible fortune-hunters in whom investments to facilitate integration could create ‘the wrong idea’ in terms of the future stay of these people (Ibid.). More projects are planned as part of this inclusive policy, such as the erection of new social housing in which both accepted asylum seekers and young people of Overvecht will be offered apartments. This is to create a better understanding between both groups and thus is hoped to enhance social cohesion in the neighborhood (Ibid.). A final important policy of this plan is that asylum seekers (and the people of Overvecht) will be offered the chance to work and enroll into internships at enterprises or in fields of work of their interest (Ibid.). This
47 conflicts with the national policy. As said before, asylum seekers are legally only allowed to work under strong conditions and internships can only be done when an asylum seeker is six months into the asylum procedure (Website Rijksoverheid ‘Mogen asielzoekers stage lopen?’). The asylum reception center in Overvecht is an EC, and thus no one residing in this center is anywhere near being into the procedure. So working and doing an internship is not allowed for any of these people. The municipality of Utrecht however has stated not to take notion of this national policy, or how Braat said it: “We are just going to do it”xxxi (Interview Braat).
Strategic interaction and vertical venue-shopping
In the top-down coordination manner in which asylum reception policy governed, the model of Scholten (2013) leads us to think that the policy differences might be resolved by path- dependency in which the differing local policy frame will eventually be forced to conform to the national policy on asylum reception, in a similar fashion in which the municipal governments of Boxtel and Heusden had stopped pursuing the alternative policy of small scale housing, and had been converted to be compatible with national policy. However, the municipality of Utrecht pursued its policy frame more strategically. First, the city’s policy frame might not had been as conflicting with national policy as was the case of the desired policy of the mayors of Boxtel and Heusden. Utrecht did not challenge the size of the centers, and also did this city’s government strategically circumvent issues regarding language lessons by providing English lessons. Also, the administrative power of Utrecht could have had an influence on the success of its policy pursuit, for the obvious reason that the government of Utrecht just has more specialization, experience and man- power to pursue its goals (Interview Braat). Overall, Utrecht’s government pursued its policy in a more strategic way than the governments of Boxtel and Heusden. Politicians and policy makers of Utrecht allegedly encountered the COA strategically by negotiating with befriended policy makers from the COA over its plan (Interview Braat). According to Braat Utrecht had some important leverage in these negotiations because of the active participation of Utrecht in finding new temporary locations and already having plans to open a new permanent asylum reception center (Ibid.).
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In its plan, the city’s government has not appealed on the national government for funding. Utrecht aims to fund its policy by by-passing the national government through a process of vertical venue-shopping. The city’s government has addressed a new European budget line called Urban Innovative Action. This budget line, which is part of the European Regional Development Fund, allocates bursaries to new social civil programs. If this bursary is attained, Utrecht is no longer reliant on the Dutch Ministry of Justice for its asylum reception budget (Interview Braat) In October 2016 Urban Innovative Action will announce which of the submitted plans will receive the bursary, and so in October the government of Utrecht will know if it will obtain this funding. However, if municipality fails to attain this bursary, the municipal government is willing to subsidize the program out of the municipal budget, and will thus still ignore the national restrictions that are set on the funding of the integration of asylum seekers in EC’s (Ibid.).
COA’s approval; Dijkhoff is benevolent too
And these efforts have been successful. While writing this thesis the COA has approved of the policy plans of Utrecht, and a spokesperson of the COA even told a reporter of De Volkskrant to applaud these plans and said to hope that other cities will follow Utrecht’s example (Interview Braat; Huisman 2016). In the agreement between the COA and Utrecht, it has been decided upon that the COA will still be closely be related to the center and involved as a stakeholder in the EC that is to be opened in Utrecht (Interview Braat). However, the traditionally dominant centralized agency will just be one of the many stakeholders in this project, and will only be in charge of managing the location and accommodating the asylum seekers (Interview Braat; Huisman 2016). Additional facilities and activities will be arranged by the municipal government and other stakeholders (Interview Braat). Even Dijkhoff has said in a parliamentary enquiry to hold a benevolent position towards the plans of Utrecht, although he did repeat that the priority for language lessons and integration should go to asylum seekers that are further in the process and of which there is a large certainty that these people will attain a residence permit (Tweede Kamer 2016). With the approval of the COA, Utrecht has gained responsibility over a part of the policy making process and has been granted the opportunity to govern asylum reception and integration in this new EC in a way that it addresses Utrecht’s specific local problems. Asylum seekers will stay in Utrecht after their procedure and they (and the people of
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Overvecht) will be provided English lessons and courses on entrepreneurship, and are also given the opportunity to work or enroll in internships during their stay in the EC (Interview Braat). So, by stretching and testing the limits of the national asylum policy, Utrecht’s policy plan has been approved of on the central governmental level. Indeed, the policy frames of Utrecht and the national government regarding asylum seeker integration still conflict in the bigger picture: the different problem perceptions (fortune-seeker vs. future citizen) and different political agendas (politicized vs. pragmatic), have resulted in different policy frames (sober vs. inclusive policy) on both levels. However, as little frame alignment has yet taken place, the entrepreneurial efforts of Utrecht in fact have led to the acknowledgement and approval of the locally desired policy by the COA and Dijkhoff. Finally, the desired policy of Utrecht, which was construed out of Utrecht’s alternative policy frame, successfully got pushed forward out of a localist, bottom-up setting on the policy agenda. And so it seems that Utrecht has shown how even in the highly centralized agenda of asylum reception policy, local-led asylum reception and integration policies that have emerged out of local-specific policy frames can be pushed forward and can be put into practice.
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5. Conclusions
Two questions are answered in this thesis: What policy frames on asylum seeker integration were formed due to agenda setting on the national and the local level in the two small municipalities of Boxtel and Heusden, and in Utrecht? And through which multi-level settings did the national and local governments interact in an attempt to put their desired policy into practice? These questions are answered and analyzed through Scholten’s theory of agenda setting in multi-level settings. This theory hypothesizes that there is a relationship between the agenda setting on various levels of government and the vertical coordination mechanism according to which a certain policy is governed. Agenda setting is understood through constellations of problem frames, policy institutions and political agendas. The agenda setting model suggests that these three factors are responsible for the way policy is formed and framed at the various levels of government. To understand the differences and interaction of these local and national policy frames, Scholten incorporated four ideal types of multi-level settings. These are the top-down, the local-led, the multi-level and the decoupled setting. In terms of the policy agenda, the current national policy comes out of a long tradition of restricting immigration and asylum policies. One of these governmental measures was the erection of the COA in 1994. With the installation of this agency, asylum reception and integration policy has become a centralized policy field, and is thus governed in a top-down manner. The State Secretary of Justice, the position currently held by Klaas Dijkhoff (VVD), is responsible for the national asylum reception policy, which is executed by the centralized agency the COA. Because of the current influx of asylum seekers into the EU and the Netherlands, policy regarding housing and integration of asylum seekers was in need of an update. In the current political climate since the 2000s, issues regarding immigration and immigrants have increasingly become politicized policy subjects as a reaction to growing nationalistic sentiment and the rise of support for populist parties. In this political climate, national politicians have felt urged to put immigration and integration issues on a prominent place on the political agenda and to act tough on these issues. The political agenda of the current government, formed by the moderate right-wing liberal party the VVD and the social- democratic party the PvdA, followed this trend. With the increased influx of asylum seekers since 2014, the new asylum policy was being framed as a national problem which was in need of resolute solutions.
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In the national government, the influx of asylum seekers into the Netherlands was being framed as an event which could bring the country into a crisis – one that could endanger the Dutch social services. Therefore, asylum seekers should be kept from coming to the Netherlands. According to the VVD’s fraction leader, asylum seekers come to the Netherlands both because they can and they want to. The conception that asylum seekers want come to the Netherlands, emerged out of the problem frame in which asylum seekers are understood as people that are possible ‘fortune-hunters,’ until they are proven to be legitimate refugees. Out of this frame the desired ‘sober’ asylum reception policy frame emerged. This policy frame supports the standpoint that asylum seekers should not be invested in in terms of integration, because it is uncertain if these people will stay in the Netherlands. Providing services as language lessons is not deemed worth the investment because of the possibility that an asylum seeker could be refused status in the Netherlands. Dijkhoff furthermore insists that facilitating the integration process of asylum seekers could send out the wrong signal regarding the future stay of these asylum seekers. Some political parties in parliament and even the coalition party the PvdA, ideologically oppose these restrictive policies, which were said to be to discourage asylum seekers from coming to the Netherlands. However, due to agenda setting, the government finally compromised and in October governmental parties the PvdA and the VVD signed an agreement. This agreement incorporated the sober policy on asylum reception and the refusal of immediate integration of asylum seekers. This policy reinforced the historically restricting asylum reception policies. Conflicting ideas on this notion of sober asylum policy emerged on the local level. In the current events, local governments were asked by Dijkhoff to help finding locations to (temporarily) accommodate asylum seekers in. Previous scholars have shown that while immigration issues became ever more politicized on the national political agenda, these issues were set on the local political agenda as problems that should be addressed pragmatically with a local-specific policy. The small municipalities of Boxtel and Heusden, as well as the case of Utrecht have set their political agendas in a similar fashion. The mayors of Boxtel and Heusden voiced their concerns on the asylum reception policy in an open letter which was published in the media. When they sent this letter in February 2016, there had been much public unrest, and even violent riots in many Dutch municipalities against the coming of new asylum reception centers. The mayors of Boxtel and Heusden had learned in previous experiences that sheltering asylum seekers in small centers instead of large centers would be beneficial for maintaining societal harmony and preventing unrest. Another part of their plan concerned facilitating immediate integration for asylum seekers. This was deemed
52 to be beneficial for maintaining societal harmony as well, because it is thought that immediately integrated asylum seekers would have a larger chance of becoming valuable contributing parts of society, instead becoming a new group of minorities that are condemned to a life-long reliance on social welfare services. Their policy frame of maintaining societal harmony by small scale reception and the facilitation of the immediate unconditional integration for new coming asylum seekers was not compatible with the Dutch sober reception policy frame. The mayors engaged with the national government by negotiating with both the COA and Dijkhoff. Dijkhoff dismissed these plans, and the discussions were eventually concluded in a top-down coordinated manner. Finally, the municipalities and the national government shared one common problem frame; facilitating accommodation for asylum seekers held the priority on both levels. Therefore, the small municipalities decided no longer pursue to small scale asylum reception and would house asylum seekers conform national policy as quickly as possible. The second case analyses agenda setting on asylum reception of the government of Utrecht. The municipal government of Utrecht also perceived problems regarding asylum reception in a rather different way than it was done on the national level. The left-leaning city council of Utrecht consists predominantly of members of the parties GroenLinks and D66. The national counterparts of these parties advocate for immediate integration of asylum seekers in parliament. Similar to the political agenda of Boxtel and Heusden, Utrecht’s government set its agenda pragmatically at resolving local-specific problems. A political opportunity emerged for creating policy for the immediate integration of asylum seekers on the agenda when neighbors of the neighborhood of Overvecht objected to the coming of an EC. The government of Utrecht created a plan which linked these two problems on its agenda. The newly created asylum reception policy in Utrecht is both pragmatic and humanitarian, and frames asylum seekers as ‘future citizens’, instead of potential ‘fortune- hunters’. Because of the differences in the way asylum seekers are framed, the desired policy differs too. Instead of aiming for a ‘sober’ policy, an ‘inclusive policy’ is the goal. This inclusive policy comes out of a pragmatic and humanitarian policy frame aimed at enhancing societal harmony and social cohesion. This is to be achieved by addressing both the needs of the people of the poor working-class neighborhood of Overvecht, as the needs of asylum seekers for successful integration, by which chances of economic self-reliance and self- development are increased. The COA has approved of this local initiative, and so Utrecht itself has gained a part of the responsibility over governing the new EC. By doing so, Utrecht steps out of a its
53 passive role into an active one in governing and making asylum reception policy. This city’s government has strategically pushed forward its policy frame from the bottom-up out of a local-led initiative and gained a larger part of control in governing asylum reception policy for the yet to establish EC. The COA and Dijkhoff have said to hold a benevolent stance toward these plans, although this did not change the overall national policy frame on asylum reception and integration. However, the entrepreneurial efforts of Utrecht have indeed resulted in the local policy frame becoming acknowledged and approved of by the executive agency and the minister, which in multi-level settings changed the exclusively top-down policy agenda for this specific case into a localist one. And so through agenda setting, the local government of Utrecht gained control over implementing an alternative asylum policy which would more accurately address local-specific problems of asylum reception, including the immediate integration and facilitating self-development of asylum seekers.
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6. Limitations
Working within the conceptual framework of constructivism and the framing of policy, I am well aware that I cannot step outside of my own frame and opinion – especially on certain highly politicized subjects. The framework that I made is what I think describes the vision of the national, as well as the local governments best. Knowing my constrains regarding my subjectivity while framing, this thesis should not be taken and interpreted as being the sole truth, but as a well-advised interpretation of the events. Another limitation is of a different nature. For creating the national frame, I initially wanted to interview involved policy makers and politicians of the national government, in the same way I did for the case studies of the local governments. However, I did not get the opportunity to speak to national politicians and policy makers. All the people working in these sectors that I approached said not to have time for an interview. I hope that I by-passed this limitation by using sufficient newspaper articles and national policy documents as sources to create the national framework. Finally, for the reason that this thesis has followed such actual events – the policy plan of Utrecht was in fact only published a month before the deadline of this thesis – there had hardly been any existing and supporting literature for my research. In fact, the final outcome of the policy implementation in Utrecht and Boxtel and Heusden cannot yet even be foreseen, because the centers still have to opened. On top of that, this thesis is constrained in time due to its deadline, and thus it might be the case that some information is has been underexposed in this study. This research should be seen first glance into agenda setting of immigration policy in multi-level settings and should be an invitation for deeper research into this topic.
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Gemeenten moeten nog 23.000 statushouders huisvesten (2016 April 4) VNG Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.vngmagazine.nl/nieuws/20673/gemeenten- moeten-nog-23000-statushouders-huisvesten Geuze, S. (2015, October 8) ‘COA onder druk:gemeenten willen kleinere opvang asielzoekers,’ De Volkskrant. http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/coa-onder-druk- gemeenten-willen-kleinere-opvang-asielzoekers~a4159280/ Grimmige azc-protesten leidden ook elders tot schrappen opvang (2016 February 3). Website NOS. Retrieved from: http://nos.nl/artikel/2084758-grimmige-azc-protesten- leidden-ook-elders-tot-schrappen-opvang.html Helft Brabantse gemeenten vangt geen vluchtelingen op (2015 November 11) Het Algemeen Dagblad. Retrieved from: http://www.ad.nl/buitenland/helft-brabantse- gemeenten-vangt-geen-vluchtelingen-op~a4d32f18/ Hendrickx, F. & N. Righton (2015 August 28) Kabinet roept gemeenten op tot extra opvang vluchtelingen. De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: http://www.volkskrant.nl/politiek/kabinet-roept-gemeenten-op-tot-extra-opvang- vluchtelingen~a4130640/ Herderscheê, G. (2015 October 10) Zijlstra heeft spijt van uitspraken over plastische chirurgie vluchtelingen. De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: http://www.volkskrant.nl/politiek/zijlstra-heeft-spijt-van-uitspraken-over-plastische- chirurgie-vluchtelingen~a4160641/ Hoedeman, J. & T. den Hartog (2015 October 12). Stop de run op Nederland, De Limburger. Retreived from: http://www.limburger.nl/cnt/dmf20151012_00000127/stop-de-run-op-nederland Huisman, C. (2016 April 27) Primeur: Utrecht gaat vluchteling al op dag één aan de stad binden. De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/primeur-utrecht-gaat-vluchteling-al-op-dag-een- aan-de-stad-binden~a4290148/ Kabinet neemt VVD-asielplan niet over (2015 March 24) NOS. Retrieved from: http://nos.nl/artikel/2026639-kabinet-neemt-vvd-asielplan-niet-over.html Kettenis, T (2015, November 11) ‘Onze grens blijft dicht voor ‘gelukszoekers’.’ Trouw. http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/36361/Vluchtelingen/article/detail/4197292/2015/11/28/On ze-grens-blijft-dicht-voor-gelukszoekers.dhtml
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'Keulen' levert Geert Wilders monsterscore op: 41 zetels. (2016 January 10). De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: http://www.volkskrant.nl/politiek/-keulen-levert-geert- wilders-monsterscore-op-41-zetels~a4221839/ Kieft, T. & M. Smit (2016, January 30). (Niet) met z’n allen voor Europa. Het Parool, pp. 12-13. Meeste asielzoekers echte vluchtelingen (2016 January 26) Het Algemeen Dagblad. Retrieved from: http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1012/Nederland/article/detail/4232668/2016/01/26/Meeste- asielzoekers-echte-vluchtelingen.dhtml Pelgrim, C., K. Versteegh, M. Kuiper & W.Brummelman. (2016 February 2) ‘Ook de draad kwijt in het asieldebat? Dit zijn de feiten,’ NRC Handelsblad. Retrieved from: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/02/02/dit-zijn-de-feiten-over-asielzoekers-in- nederland Pen, H (2016, February 7) Syriërs Shant en Hagop: Het is zo fijn om verder te gaan. Het Parool. Retrieved from: http://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/syriers-shant-en-hagop- het-is-zo-fijn-om-verder-te-gaan~a4240193/ Pijpker, J. & E. Smal (2015, 10 October) VVD: maak Nederland onaantrekkelijk voor vluchtelingen. Het NRC-Handelsblad. Retrieved from: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/10/10/zijlstra-vvd-maak-nederland-onaantrekkelijk- voor-vluchtelingen Rosman, C. (2016 January 27) Timmermans goochelt met aantallen vluchtelingen. Het Algemeen Dagblad. Retrieved from: http://www.ad.nl/buitenland/timmermans- goochelt-met-aantallen-vluchtelingen~ad541565/ Rusman, F. (2015 October 12) De VVD wil vluchtelingen nét even minder geven. Het NRC Handelsblad. Retrieved from: http://www.nrc.nl/next/2015/10/12/de-vvd- wil-vluchtelingen-net-even-minder-geven-1546625 Salm, H. (2015 October 17) Zoveel asielzoekers, dat is niet nieuw voor Nederland. Trouw. Retrieved from: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/36561/Asielbeleid/article/detail/4165320/2015/10/17/Zovee l-asielzoekers-dat-is-niet-nieuw-voor-Nederland.dhtml Schmidt, C. (2016 May 3) Asielzoeker weigeren gaat EU-land veel geld kosten, Trouw Retrieved from: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4496/Buitenland/article/detail/4294244/2016/05/03/Asielzo eker-weigeren-gaat-EU-land-veel-geld-kosten.dhtml
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Stokmans, D (2016 February 29). Overheid gaat intern toch uit van 94.000 nieuwe asielzoekers in 2016. Het NRC Handelsblad. Retrieved from: http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/2016/02/29/overheid-gaat-intern-toch-uit-van-94000- nieuwe-as-1595940 Timmermans: 60 procent vluchtelingen heeft economisch motief (2016 January 25) Trouw. Retrieved from: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/36361/Vluchtelingen/article/detail/4232000/2016/01/25/Ti mmermans-60-procent-vluchtelingen-heeft-economisch-motief.dhtml Van de Poll, W. (2015 October 8). Verwarring tekent opvang asielzoekers. Trouw. Retrieved from:http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/36561/Asielbeleid/article/detail/4158831/2015/10/08/ Verwarring-tekent-opvang-asielzoekers.dhtml Van den Dool, P. (2015 October 7) Dijkhoff sluit vaker dwingen gemeenten tot opvang niet uit. Het NRC Handelsblad. Retrieved from: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/10/07/dijkhoff-sluit-vaker-dwingen-gemeenten-tot- opvang-niet-uit Zandstra, P. (2015 October 20) ‘Dijkhoff stuurt open brief aan asielzoekers,’ NRC Handelsblad . Retrieved from: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/10/20/open-brief- dijkhoff-aan-asielzoekers-moet-verwachtingen-temperen Zeilstra pleit voor sober bestaan. (2015 October 10). De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/zijlstra-pleit-voor-sober-bestaan- asielzoekers~a4160551/
Interviews Interview Amsterdam. With Rogier Korterink, policy advisor municipality of Amsterdam. Portfolio education and asylum. Conducted on May 31st 2016. Interview Boxtel. With Mark Buijs, the mayor of the municipality of Boxtel. Conducted on May 17th 2016. Interview Heusden. With Bas Schel, communication advisor and spokesperson of mayor Jan Hamming, the mayor of Heusden. Conducted on the May 2nd 2016. Interview IND. Marjolijn van Gasselt, interviewer and decision-maker IND. Conducted on July 10th 2016. Interview OTAV. With Carijn Tulp, account manager at the supportive team for asylum seeker policy for the VNG. Conducted on May 18th 2016. Interview Utrecht Podt. With Anne-Marije Podt, D66 councilor in Utrecht. Holds asylum portfolio. Conducted on May 20th 2016. Interview Utrecht Braat. With Jan Braat, senior policy advisor on refugee and alien policy for the municipality of Utrecht and advisor of alderman Kees Diepeveen (Asylum). Conducted on May 27th 2016.
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Interview VNG. With Rianne Lannoye, Senoir policy maker at the VNG. Coordinator at the negotiations over the two administrative agreements. Conducted on: May 19th 2016.
Juridical sources
Vreemdelingenwet 2000. Article 29, sub 1b (2000 November 23). Retrieved on June 13, 2016. Retrieved from: http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0011823/2015-07-20
Policy and governmental sources Azmani, M (2015 March 22) Migratienota. De (buiten) grenzen van Europa. Retrieved from: http://cdn.vellance.com/usmedia/vvd/uploaded/attachment- files/210.pdf Bestuursakkoord Verhoogde Asielinstroom (2015 November 27). Retrieved from: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2015/11/27/bestuursakkoord- verhoogde-asielinstroom COA (2013) Jaarverslag COA 2013: ‘Het COA door de ogen van’ Retrieved from: https://www.coa.nl/sites/www.coa.nl/files/publicaties/bestanden/jaarverslag_2013.pdf Dijkhoff (2015 October 19) Asiel in Nederland [Letter to asylum seekers]. Retrieved from: http://vkplusmobilebackend.persgroep.net/rest/content/assets/8e627de6-f3be- 4b85-a8f4-7af572b0de43 ‘Handreiking verhoogde asielinstroom’ (2015 October 11). Retrieved from: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2015/11/10/handreiking-verhoogde- asielinstroom IND (2015 September) Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst Dé toelatingsorganisatie van Nederland. Retrieved from: https://ind.nl/Documents/6070.pdf Samsom, D (2016 March 15) Humane, houdbare en legale asielroute bieden. Partij van de Arbeid. [Speech text] Retrieved from: http://www.pvda.nl/berichten/2016/03/Humane%2C+houdbare+en+legale+asielroute +bieden Tweede Kamer (2016 May 26). Verslag van een algemeen overleg vreemdelingen en asielbeleid. Retrieved from: https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/detail?id=2016D18179&did=2016D1817 9 UNHCR (2010 December) Convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/10003799/Downloads/3b66c2aa10.pdf Uitwerkingsakkoord Verhoogde Asielinstroom (2016 April 28). Retrieved from: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2016/04/28/rapport- uitwerkingsakkoord-verhoogde-asielinstroom
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VVD (2015 October) Grenzen aan de opvang. Retrieved from: http://cdn.vellance.com/usmedia/vvd/uploaded/attachment-files/272.pdf
Radio broadcast Fragment 'Akkoord over integratie vluchtelingen onvoldoende'. (2016 April 28). Dit Is De Dag. [Sound file]. Retrieved from: http://www.eo.nl/ditisdedag/radio/item/akkoord-over-integratie-vluchtelingen- onvoldoende/
Videos Danny zoekt problemen aflevering 4: Utrecht, Overvecht – Noodopvang? De fik d’r in. (2016, May 25). NPO3 [Video file]. Retrieved from: http://www.npo.nl/danny- zoekt-problemen/20-04-2016/VPWON_1260028
Websites CBS (2016 January 27) In 2015 twee keer zo veel asielzoekers en nareizigers als in 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2016/04/in-2015-twee-keer- zo-veel-asielzoekers-en-nareizigers-als-in-2014 COA. Soorten Opvang. Retrieved on 2016 May 28 at https://www.coa.nl/nl/opvanglocaties/soorten-opvang COA, Locaties voor jongeren Retrieved on 2016 May 29 at https://www.coa.nl/nl/opvanglocaties/locaties-voor-jongeren D66, Een rechtvaardig en effectief asielbeleid. Retrieved from: https://d66.nl/standpunt-over/een-rechtvaardig-en-effectief-asielbeleid/ ERCE, Dublin regulations. Retrieved on 2016 May 30 at http://www.ecre.org/topics/areas-of-work/protection-in-europe/10-dublin- regulation.html GroenLinks, Vluchtelingen. Retrieved on 2016 June 7 at https://groenlinks.nl/standpunten/vluchtelingen IND (2016 April 25) Asielzoekers ontvangen verlengingsbrief van de IND. Retrieved on 2016 June 15 from: https://ind.nl/organisatie/nieuws/Paginas/Asielzoekers- ontvangen-verlengingsbrief-van-de-IND.aspx PVV, Debat over opvang Syriërs. Retrieved on 2016 June 7 at http://www.pvv.nl/index.php/component/content/article.html?id=7046:-debat-over- opvang-syriers-
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Rijksoverheid, Huisvesting asielzoekers met verblijfsvergunning. Retrieved on 2016 June 6 at https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/asielbeleid/inhoud/huisvesting- asielzoekers-met-verblijfsvergunning Rijksoverheid, Mogen asielzoekers stage lopen? Retrieved on 2016, June 2 at: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/asielbeleid/vraag-en-antwoord/mogen- asielzoekers-stage-lopen Rijksoverheid, Mogen asielzoekers werken? Retrieved on 2016, June 8 at: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/vluchtelingen-werk-en-integratie/vraag-en- antwoord/mogen-asielzoekers-werken UNHCR, Asylum-Seekers Retrieved on 2016 June 6 at http://www.unhcr.org/asylum- seekers.html
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Appendix: Translations of quotes i “Gelukszoekers” ii “Het zet onze sociale voorzieningen onder druk en we weten niet wie we binnenhalen: een echte vluchteling, een gelukszoeker of een terrorist.“ ”Het huidige Europese migratiesysteem is onhoudbaar en vormt een groot risico voor onze veiligheid. Het is niet te voorkomen dat ook terroristen hun weg naar Europa weten te vinden.” iii “Europese samenlevingen kunnen de grote groepen migranten niet aan” iv Het huidige asielbeleid is niet meer vol te houden.” v ”De sociale voorzieningen staan op het spel” vi ‘Grenzen aan opvang’ vii “Voor ons staat vast dat vluchtelingen recht hebben op veiligheid. Maar dat hoeft niet in Europa te zijn. “ viii “De tweede reden is dat vluchtelingen graag naar Nederland wíllen komen.” ix “Dat komt door onze royale sociale voorzieningen.” x “Er is een run op Nederland, die moeten we stoppen. Want de zorgkosten lopen op, de woningmarkt loopt vast. Dat kunnen we niet accepteren. We moeten naar een minimumniveau voor deze vluchtelingen. Het is mijn dure plicht als politicus om ons eigen welvaartsniveau, waar hard voor gewerkt is, te beschermen.” xi “Nederland onaantrekkelijk maken voor mensen die hier geen veiligheid, maar vooral een betere economische toekomst zoeken.” xii “dus moeten we ervoor zorgen dat ze de grens niet wíllen oversteken.” xiii “Een humane, houdbare en legale asielroute bieden voor hen die op de vlucht zijn voor oorlog en geweld.” xiv “Een strategie van ontmoediging via ongelijke behandeling wijzen we af. […] we willen vluchtelingen netjes opvangen zoals we dat in Nederland altijd hebben gedaan” xv ‘’Sober en Rechtvaardig.’’ xvi ”winst dat de mensen zien dat het kabinet iets doet” xvii “Ik vind het geen verstandig idee om iedereen te bedienen met professionele taalles. Een groot deel komt uit Albanië, uit de Balkan. Dat zijn mensen die helemaal niet mogen blijven. We moeten wel blijven opletten dat we niet een circus opbouwen om mensen die uit Albanië hier hun geluk komen beproeven, om die van taalles te voorzien.” xviii ,,Het doel is juist niet om te komen tot een permanente verblijfsvergunning. We willen het tijdelijke karakter van het verblijf benadrukken." xix “Wat wij in al dit geweld missen, is de menselijke maat, een besef van humaniteit en barmhartigheid” xx “Wij denken dat de oplossing ligt in kleinschalige opvang waar vanaf het begin aandacht is voor integratie.” xxi “100 oké, 600 nee” xxii 'Het Rijk draagt mensen na de opvang over aan gemeenten, maar na twee jaar stilstand wordt integreren een groot probleem.' xxiii “We spraken mensen uit de gemeenten en die zeggen allemaal bang te zijn voor grootschalige opvang, maar staan allemaal achter kleinschalig.” xxiv “Zoals wij het meekrijgen, lijkt het erop dat de VVD helemaal geen vluchtelingen op wil vangen. Ze vrezen dat als je mensen snel laat integreren dat ze niet meer weggaan. […] negentig procent van deze vluchtelingen blijft, het is een enorme fout niet direct te beginnen met integratie.” xxv “Het COA wijst alleen maar naar de kosten. Ons plan is misschien in de eerste plaats wel duurder, maar in een aantal jaar haal je het eruit. Geintegreerde nieuwkomers zullen uiteindelijk een maatschappelijke rol vervullen. […]
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xxvi We hebben eerder vluchtelingen gehuisvest die nog heel slecht geintegreerd waren. Dat was aan het begin echt een ramp. We weten hoe wachten met het integratieproces de kans dat mensen in de bijstand geraken toeneemt. Of erger nog: zelfs onrust kunnen gaan zaaien.” xxvii “In een andere stad zouden ze zich weer helemaal ontheemd voelen, en dan moet het process weer opnieuw beginnen.” xxviii „Ik ben een enorme fan van kleinschalige opvang, maar doe dat dan met statushouders. Als er 5.000 asielzoekers per jaar ons land binnen zouden komen, kun je nadenken over kleine locaties, maar die luxe hebben we gewoon niet. Het zijn er veel meer. Bovendien weet je niet van al die mensen of ze hier mogen blijven. Dan steek ik liever geld in al die mensen die al een verblijfsvergunning hebben.” xxix “Uiteindelijk hebben we in samenspraak met het COA 250 vluchtelingen toegewezen gekregen, wat dus raar genoeg 150 vluchtelingen minder is dan hoeveel wij zelf wilden opvangen. […] Maar we dachten: we kunnen er wel alles aan gaan doen om ons gelijk te krijgen, maar goed, vertel maar aan die vluchtelingen aan de grens van Griekenland of Macedonië dat wij er nog even niet uit zijn. “ xxx “Inclusief beleid” xxxi “We gaan het gewoon doen.”
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