This study takes its departure from literature on the far-reaching engagements from civil society during the 2015 “refugee crisis” in Europe as it seeks to understand the status of collaborative governance at the local level. It takes an in-depth look of Malmö, a city in Sweden which in 2015 became the centre for the Swedish refugee reception and solidarity initiatives. The study identifies challenges and opportunities of horizontal collaborations to develop the social dimension of city resilience. It includes eleven interviews with key actors from the civil society sector as well as from the municipality and utilizes theory on solidarities in the “refugee crisis” together with social cohesion and inclusion as a framework for analyzing data. This allows for a comprehensive appraisal of the (spatially produced) responses to migration from the city's horizontal alliances. The findings suggest that there are diverse conclusions to be made about the long-term potential of horizontal collaborations in bringing about social resilience. On the one side it is discovered that short-term project collaborations may only serve to “fill the gap” left by neo-liberal local governments and not bring about the structural change needed. On the other side, it is found that horizontal collaborations can be a strategy for civil society actors to influence more inclusive alternatives by bringing the realities of refugees into local policy making, particularly those refugees otherwise rendered invisible due to legal categorizations. Lastly, there are suggestions made for how to enhance the opportunities of horizontal collaborations in creating a socially cohesive, inclusive and resilient city.

No abstract

No abstract

The dramatic increase of asylum seekers entering the EU in 2015 profoundly changed migration politics in many EU countries. Not least in Sweden which accepted more migrants per capita than any other EU country but then swung abruptly to become among the strictest recipient countries. We use Sweden as a critical and extreme case to argue that the rapid shift in asylum politics and public opinion towards migration is not profoundly shared in society. Based on a local media analysis of three types of purposively selected rural municipalities followed by the analysis of a survey of civil society organizations sent to all 290 municipalities in Sweden, we find strong civil society support and willingness to both receive migrants and facilitate their integration into society. Despite increasing votes for political parties with anti-migration policies, we also find remarkably positive attitudes towards migrants in civil society organizations and among citizens in the EU27 barometer for Sweden. The upshot is optimism that civil society can balance the anti-immigration governance imposed by both left and right political regimes and that populism will succeed only if it has the capacity to thoroughly transform civil society attitudes—which we doubt.