How does policy change at the street level? Local knowledge, a community of practice and EU visa policy implementation in Morocco

Built on a comparative case study of the 'street-level implementation' of EU visa policy in the consulates of Belgium, France and Italy in Casablanca, the focus of this article is on decision-making on Schengen visa applications. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork, I show that, although common and legally binding acts regulate EU visa policy, cross-national differences persist. However, these diminish when EU visa policy is put into practice thanks to the informal interactions of implementing personnel. A shared understanding of the migratory 'risk' is emerging. That is the 'risk of lawful settlement' rather than the risk of undocumented migration, despite the claims that visa policy's objective is stemming irregular migration and although evidence suggests that undocumented migrants are mostly visa over-stayers. Because national state actors share a concern about the border controls that granting visas achieves, and because they confer with one another, the adoption of EU visa policy has transformed them into a 'community of practice' and, in the process, they develop and learn 'local knowledge' - the specialist expertise that underlines policy implementation. Unlike the link between expert knowledge, epistemic communities and policy formulation, the relationship between local knowledge, inter-organizational communities of practice and policy implementation remains largely understudied.