Consequences for Swedish municipalities due to the European migrant crisis were dramatic and resulted in substantial policy change. In this text, that consists of the introduction chapter of a forthcoming book project, we build on this event. We derive from the growing interest in the crucial role played by the local level within the policy sector of migration and integration policy. Such an interest is motivated by an increased understanding among scholars on how subnational polities actually deal with local policy efforts in relation to the reception and inclusion of immigrants. From our perspective, this involves two types of different but related types of policies and we distinguish between policies that (i) regulate and distribute the admission of immigrants into local societies and (ii) policies that regulate the social integration of immigrants in their new society. These two dimensions of policy are though interdependent and they will partly be analyzed integrated. Although this book has, the ambition to add general theoretical knowledge it reaches such knowledge from analyses of the local level in Sweden. Sweden is worth studying both for being an important host country for immigrants and since policy making at the local Swedish arena has not been studied comprehensively from an explanatory perspective. The theoretical starting point is taken in theories on governance perspective accounting for both horizontal and vertical relations among involved actors that are combined with the emerging literature that propose how and why local governments take action in this issue. We will do this by employing a multi-method approach that draws from both quantitative and qualitative data. This involves descriptive and explanatory analyses of the constitution of both types of policy in the 290 municipalities as well as in-depth case studies that have the possibility to get closer to processes of how policies are reached, implemented and what output they will deliver.