Insurgent Asylum Policies in European Cities: A Multi-Level Governance Perspective

Abstract

Cities worldwide operate on the frontlines to support forced migrants. Some of these cities even overstep their formal prerogatives by refusing to comply with, and at times overtly subverting, the prescriptions of national authorities. This article builds a conceptual framework to understand such forms of insurgent urban asylum policy-making. We argue that insurgency depends on how city governments mediate the constraints and opportunities that emanate from the horizontal and vertical dimensions of multi-level governance, which capture city-level political dynamics as well as intergovernmental interactions. To illustrate our framework, we compare asylum policy-making in Barcelona, Milan, and Munich during the 2010s “refugee crisis.” While Munich invested in rather uncontroversial integration programs, Milan and Barcelona overstepped their jurisdictional boundaries and supported migrants considered “illegal” by national governments. These insurgent responses were enacted as a “remedy from below,” stemming from a sense of urgency that was not as pressing for Munich’s policy-makers because of the greater capacity of Germany’s asylum system.

An urban take on sustainable development policies and corresponding positioning strategies

“…However, when cities promote policies that are aligned with the national policy framework, a bridging of scales along the formal vertical lines of authority seems to be the most pragmatic and opportunistic approach, and it is also in the interest of the national government. These findings corroborate existing MLG literature showing that cities make use of versatile strategies to target different actors in the context of specific policies 11,20 .…”

“…While appreciating the value of the multi-level framework in the sustainability transition literature 10 , we argue that a MLG perspective can enrich the theorization of relations, contestations and strategies between levels of government. We therefore contribute to the recent literature on (contested) relations between local governments and higher governmental authorities 11,13,16 by specifically focusing on SD policy-making and introducing a framework to understand national-urban relations and multi-level policy-oriented strategies.…”

“…It called for the direct reception of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea and for shared responsibility and city-to-city refugee relocations between Southern and Northern European cities. This proactive approach openly challenged the national and European asylum policies 11,29 . In a similar vein, Amsterdam developed its '24 h Reception for Undocumented Migrants' plan, which provides a very comprehensive support structure for irregular migrants in terms of access to housing, health care, legal counselling and police protection 30 .…”

“…The framework allows us to consider in what cases USD policies align and advance national policy agendas and when the two are in conflict. Where policies are contested, cities may (explicitly or implicitly) deploy positioning strategies to contradict, stretch, or circumvent such higher-level agendas [11][12][13] .…”

“…For each policy type, we furthermore identified the primary cooperation and positioning strategies at different governance levels. Cities use various strategies to defend, legitimize or advance their policies in MLG settings 11,17,18 . These strategies can be either explicit or implicit 16 .…”