ABSTRACT
For a long time, the study of immigrant policies in Western Europe was concen trated on describing policy instruments (e.g. Hammar 1985; Vermeulen 1997), assessing outcomes (e.g. Bohning and Zegers de Beijl 1996; Doomernik 1998) and making cross-country comparisons to distinguish different national 'inte gration models' (e.g. Castles 1995; Favell 1998; Schnapper 1992). Only recently have the interests turned from analysing the content of immigrant policies to explaining their development. Most studies addressing this issue so far have investi gated how migrants have acquired new civil, social and political rights, and which actors and processes were responsible for these outcomes. Surprisingly, such studies have revealed that rights granted to migrants were not a result of the mobilisation of solidarity movements, campaigns by migrants themselves or moves by political actors. They were outcomes of the commitment of civil servants and judges acting 'behind closed doors' (Guiraudon 1998: 293). The role of the judiciary may be particularly crucial to understanding the legal accommodation of migrants by Western states (Joppke 1998). However, because such studies have focused solely on how migrants have acquired new rights, they have examined only a small fraction of the public efforts that can be labelled 'immigrant policy’ in European nation states. They have neglected a wide array of programmes and pol icies intended to further the integration of immigrants into the host societies - such as consultative structures for migrants, special programmes to integrate
them into the labour market, various schemes for social assistance, and ethnic monitoring (Mahnig and Wimmer 2000).
