Enlightened Localism and Local Experimentalism in Public Policy: Schooling Policies of Children with Immigrant Background in Denmark and Spain

Abstract

I examine how local municipalities in Denmark and Spain carried out experiments in schooling policy on pupils with immigrant backgrounds, toward improving the process of social integration and academic performance. Policy affecting second generation immigrant children generated conflicts over rights, values, and norms in the public sphere. I analyze local public policy decisions first by confronting two perspectives, local experimentalism and enlightened localism, with one another, and then by identifying various ways in which they are complementary.