Why do small Western European localities promote local integration policies? A qualitative comparative analysis

While European small and medium-sized towns (SMsTs) received growing numbers of humanitarian migrants since 2014, little is still known about the (long-term) integration policies they develop and the factors driving their emergence. Most existing works on local migration policy (including those on bigger cities) are based on few case studies, often cover ‘extreme cases’, and mostly focus on asylum-seekers’ reception rather than integration. Existing studies that theorise the drivers of local integration policy focus on individual sets of drivers (economic, demographic, political), without explaining how these drivers interact and what is their relative importance. This article fills these gaps developing the first comparative, medium-N, cross-country study of the drivers of local integration policy in ‘ordinary’ SMsTs, asking: which configurations of factors contribute to the development of local integration policies in Western European SMsTs? We specifically focus on contact-facilitation measures (aimed at favouring encounters between migrants and locals) and antidiscrimination measures (aimed at countering discrimination or racism). To answer this question, building on existing theories and relying on both qualitative and quantitative data (including 403 interviews), we develop a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) focusing on 28, rigorously selected, SMsTs. Our analysis highlights the primacy of political drivers over structural ones in explaining the development of local integration policies. We show that a left-of-centre political orientation is a necessary condition for the emergence of such policies and highlight how left-of-centre local governments mostly develop local integration policies reacting to the presence of right-wing higher-level governments or radical right parties within local councils.