Thinking alike, acting alike? An assessment of organizational homophily and paradigmatic pragmatism in networks for local integration policies

Abstract As migrant integration policies touch upon almost all spheres of citizens’ life, collaboration across policy levels as well as across policy domains is needed. Over time, a series of both policy and analytical paradigms on the integration of migrants emerged, going from the traditional ideas of differentialism and assimilation, over multiculturalism, interculturalism, integrationism, liberal egalitarianism and mainstreaming, up to superdiversity and intersectionality. While networks for integration policies are likely to be at least partly driven by these paradigms, recent studies seem to nuance this assumption based on so called paradigmatic pragmatism, meaning that cities draw on a variety of ideas and pragmatically combine them under the header of diversity policies. The need for multi-level and multi-actor governance on migrant integration, the theoretical knowledge about homophily in organizational networks, and the recent findings on paradigmatic pragmatism, raise the question to what extent collaboration between public and non-profit organizations active around migrant integration is based on a shared policy paradigm on the integration of migrants. This question is answered based on a multiple case study of four central cities in Flanders (Belgium), covering 1.403 organizations. In the quantitative and qualitative (social network) analyses, comparisons along both the axes of cities and policy domains are made. Findings contribute to literature on organizational homophily, showing that clustering of organizations is likely to be at least partly driven by policy paradigm on integration. This is however nuanced by the observation that policy paradigms appear to be ambiguous, which in turn reveals opportunities for more flexible collaborations between actors and for avoiding deadlocks in policy making.