Informal Consultation: Non State-Actors' strategies in EU regular and irregular migration policies

Informal Consultation: Non State-Actors' strategies in EU regular and irregular migration policies

Many analyses have acknowledged the increasing role of non-state actors (NSA) in the global governance of transnational policy challenges, still little is known about their informal strategies to consult state actors. Combatting the challenges linked to regular and irregular migration, the EU institutions have increasingly established formal routes to facilitate consultation by NSA. Yet, in some cases NSA prefer informal routes of consultation over formal ones, but it is unclear why and how this takes place. The paper develops a systematic framework identifying the underlying strategies, arguing that this informality can only be fully understood in correlation with the formal institutional setting. In the perspectives of historical and sociological institutionalism process tracing is conducted unveiling the specific formal settings in regular and irregular migration policies. Based thereon by means of expert interviews and participant observation, the paper presents an analysis of the NSA’s power, timing in the policy-making process and interests that conditioned and facilitated the application of the informal routes to consultation. The paper is part of an ongoing PhD project.