Governing through partnership: Strategic migration partnerships and the politics of enrolment and ambivalence

Darling, Jonathan

Abstract

This paper examines the role of partnerships in the governance of UK migration policy, considering how partnerships have been mobilised to navigate tensions between multiple state and non-state actors. The paper focuses on the work of regional strategic migration partnerships (SMPs) across the UK, bodies that bring together national and local government, statutory agencies, third sector organisations, and private contractors, all concerned with the management of migration and asylum. Considering SMPs as sites of collaboration and contention within local ‘battlegrounds’ of policy, the paper examines how enrolment and socialisation shape relations between actors, serving to sustain governmental authority but also offer openings for the formation of advocacy coalitions. Through examining how SMPs addressed the outsourcing of asylum support services, I argue that for many non-state actors enrolment into an SMP produces an ambivalent politics centred on forms of tactical closeness and critical discomfort. In concluding, I suggest the forms of intimacy created through enrolment serve to extend ambivalence as actors become torn between relationships and commitments, highlighting the fraught and often unstable nature of SMPs as bodies of policy coordination and advocacy potential.

Citation

Darling, J. (2024). Governing through partnership: Strategic migration partnerships and the politics of enrolment and ambivalence. Political Geography, 108, Article 103041. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103041

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 5, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Dec 16, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Jan 17, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 17, 2024
• Journal: Political Geography
• Print ISSN: 0962-6298
• Electronic ISSN: 1873-5096
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 108
• Article Number: 103041
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103041
• Keywords: Sociology and Political Science; History; Geography, Planning and Development
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2148561