The Governance of Superdiversity: A Complexity Perspective

This chapter brings a complexity perspective to the governance of superdiversity. Superdiversity as a specific form of social complexity challenges traditional views on policymaking in the area of migration and migration-related diversities. Ideas about societal steering, the role of central government, rationality, and controllability often don’t reflect the reality of complexity, where the role of government is often limited, and societal processes are unpredictable and characterized by high uncertainty. However, belief in societal steering and in central government has remained firm in this policy area. A complexity governance perspective helps clarify that coping with complexity requires a different perspective on policies, policymaking, and the role of central government. From a complexity perspective, the chapter argues that failing to come to terms with complexity is one of the reasons policies in this area so often seem to derail, as witnessed in the “refugee crisis,” the “multicultural crisis,” and the many other crises that this policy area has gone through. A complexity governance perspective helps explain how policy processes can come to terms with complexity by a structural process of mainstreaming migration and diversities in society and in institutions. From this perspective, migration and migration-related diversity are not approached as stand-alone topics that can be engineered or “fixed” from a state-centric perspective, but as complex topics that cut across generic policy sectors and institutions and that require a structural and responsive approach to often unpredictable, uncertain situations with a broad actor network.