Framing Migrants: How two middle-sized Dutch cities frame highly skilled and undocumented migrants in housing and employment policies, and how NGOs act within that policy space
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2025-08-19
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en
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This thesis examines how Dutch municipalities navigate the simultaneous presence of highly-skilled and undocumented migrants, and how this dual dynamic shapes housing and employment policy as well as NGO influence. It asks how these groups are framed in municipal policy, and what opportunities this creates for NGO policy engagement. Theoretically, this research draws on framing (and its ties to securitization, othering, and polarization), the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and scholarship on national-local migration governance, gentrification, brain gain and deskilling. Methodologically, it employs a qualitative embedded case study design combining discourse/framing analysis of municipal documents of the municipalities Eindhoven and Tilburg, along with interviews. Findings reveal a two-track approach: highly-skilled migrants are explicitly welcomed as knowledge-economy assets with reciprocal integration efforts, while support for undocumented migrants is more implicit and reciprocal, tied to future prospects and public order. This division extends across housing and employment, as municipalities fill national gaps and pragmatically coordinate, continuing parts of the LVV cooperation informally with NGOs. NGOs act as brokers and agenda-setters, but their leverage remains contingent on coalitions and national frameworks. Normatively, this research warns against dignity becoming conditional on utility and notes risks of human-capital loss. It shows how (re)framing structures urban outcomes and opens space for co-production, and recommends stronger municipal coordination, and NGO coalition-building and counter-framing.
Keywords: municipal migration governance, framing, highly-skilled migrants, undocumented migrants, housing policy, employment policy, NGOs, multi-level governance.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen