Barcelona: municipalist policy entrepreneurship in a centralist refugee reception system

Abstract

This article is a case study of Barcelona's policy entrepreneurship in innovating refugee reception. In a context of a highly centralised and increasingly dysfunctional Spanish refugee reception system, it traces how Barcelona, after declaring itself a city of refuge, aimed to change refugee reception into a more decentralised and bottom-up system with a major role of cities. Following Minstrom and Norman, the article reconstructs the city's policy entrepreneurship and shows how the city 1) led by example in developing innovative local policies; 2) developed political arguments for change from a municipalist stance in coalition with other cities at national and EU level; and 3) worked its arguments into more technical discussions on the future of integration funding in the EU. On the basis of these developments, the article reaches two main conclusions. First, while the different registers of policy entrepreneurship cannot be directly connected to any concrete change of the multilevel setup of refugee reception, they do represent a significant step forward in cities' self-organisation beyond ideological lines and a factor contributing to a stronger recognition of cities in refugee reception in Europe. Second, while the literature on multilevel governance has an in-built bias towards more coordinated and harmonious relationships across tiers, the case of Barcelona shows that more attention should be paid to conflict and change.

The role of local political leadership in the reception of forced migrants: evidence from Greece

“…That said, research conducted in a number of municipalities in several EU countries in the context of 'Cities of Refuge' suggests that interactive and multilevel local political leadership has been an important factor in the development of more welcoming and inclusive municipal approaches to forced migrants' reception and integration (e.g., Oomen et al, 2021;Sabchev, 2021). In addition, a number of studies in migration policy research and refugee studies demonstrate similar findings, highlighting the explicit engagement of local political leaders in building coalitions with local and transnational partners (Betts et al, 2020;Garcés-Mascareñas & Gebhardt, 2020). This is particularly relevant for larger cities, whose mayors have more resources and soft power to employ strategies based on negotiation, collaboration and persuasion in advancing their policy goals (Sørensen, 2020).…”

“…In this context, mayors can potentially contribute to safeguarding forced migrants' rights by interpreting and applying regulations from different levels and giving them meaning 'on the ground' (Oomen et al, 2021;Terlouw & Böcker, 2019). Notably in this regard, the mayors of major European cities, such as Athens and Barcelona, have been actively engaged in a symbolicbut also very practicalstruggle for policy changes in migration governance, strongly emphasizing the need to better protect migrants' human rights (Garcés-Mascareñas & Gebhardt, 2020). In short, scrutinizing the link between local political leadership and municipal policy responses to forced migrants' arrivals can provide practical insights on how to strengthen the role of mayors in this policy area, and enhance the protection of forced migrants.…”

Horizontal Local Governance and Social Inclusion: The Case of Municipality-Civil Society Engagement During Refugee Reception in Malmö, Sweden

“…For example, Catalan city Barcelona is declared as a "Refuge" city by its municipality. Local migration policies have been developed in cooperation with civil society organizations and has enabled more inclusive responses to the "refugee crisis" than that of the Spanish nation state (Agustín and Jorgensen, 2019;Garcés-Mascareñas and Gebhardt, 2020). Moreover, the focus on the local level of migration governance helps to mitigate the "methodological nationalism" which for long has underpinned migration research (Oliver et al, 2020).…”

Border Struggles, Political Unity, and the Transformative Power of the Local: US Sanctuary Cities and Spain’s Cities of Refuge

“…In Spain, welcoming city designations have focused primarily on refugees (rather than the more amplified embrace of migrants characterized by sanctuary city designations in the US), yet there are still important parallels between these designations with respect to questions of political unity and the power of the local. The extant research on the origins of city-of-refuge initiatives in Spain has also emphasized the important role of already existing political unity, especially via migrant and social justice organizations and social movements as well as oppositional politics (Fernández-Suárez and Espiñeira 2021;Garcés-Mascareñas and Gebhardt 2020).…”