“…Hence, rather than MLG, the political goal of the cities taking the lead in the early days of the WGM&I – that is, Rotterdam and Barcelona – was to establish a system of collaborative inter‐governmental relations with EU institutions. As Gebhardt and Güntner ( 2021 ) report and as was confirmed by my interviewees, the people mobilized in this period were primarily city officers, while mayors like Ivo Opstelten of the city of Rotterdam played a key role in bringing the requests of the working group to the attention of the EC. This activity lobbying for more influence led to several symbolic and concrete results.…”
Section: Eurocities and The Working Group On Migration And Integrationsupporting
confidence: 60%
“…However, the WGM&I was only formally established as one of the working groups of the Eurocities Forum for Social Affairs in 2005. The official documents of this period (for an extensive analysis, see Gebhardt and Güntner, 2021) reveal the ambition of the WGM&I to have a say in the definition of the ‘European Framework on Integration’ – which was introduced in 2002 in the context of the 1999 Tampere Programme – and to establish direct relations with the European Commission. Regarding the policies of national governments, we recommend […] that in the design of policy concerning immigration and asylum, reception and integration, national governments take into account the most essential element: the impact of policy at the local level … [p. 6].…”
Section: Eurocities and The Working Group On Migration And Integrationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In fact, according to other interviewees (WGM&I_int4 and WGM&I_int5), in spring 2016 the mayor of Amsterdam, together with those of Barcelona, Athens, Ghent, Helsinki, Berlin, Leipzig, Malmö, Paris and Rome, met with Dimitris Avramopoulos, the Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, to denounce the failure of EU refugee redistribution and ask for direct support for cities (see also Gebhardt and Güntner, 2021). At the beginning, the European Commission chaired by Junker was clearly not interested in cities; matters of migration were dealt with national governments only … In the midst of the crisis though, we saw a change of attitude.…”
Section: Eurocities and The Working Group On Migration And Integrationmentioning
City networks (CNs) are often enthusiastically regarded as key actors in processes of Europeanization and multi-level governance (MLG) policy-making in Europe and beyond. However, systematic research on highly contentious issues like migration is still scarce. Building on an understanding of MLG as a specific mode or instance of policy-making, in this article I seek to understand why and how CNs engage in MLG-like policy-making on a typical issue of state sovereignty. I apply the causal process-tracing method to analyse the genesis and policy actions undertaken in the last two decades by two migration CNs in different multi-level political settings: the Eurocities Working Group on Migration and Integration (WGM&I) in the EU and Welcoming America (WA) in the US. The results show that, notwithstanding the differences in the institutional settings, in both contexts instances of MLG policy-making have taken place in the shadow of the will of the national governments, which remain fundamental gate-keepers even in the EU supranational polity, where the European Commission has been particularly active in supporting migration CNs' initiatives.
“…Hence, rather than MLG, the political goal of the cities taking the lead in the early days of the WGM&I – that is, Rotterdam and Barcelona – was to establish a system of collaborative inter‐governmental relations with EU institutions. As Gebhardt and Güntner ( 2021 ) report and as was confirmed by my interviewees, the people mobilized in this period were primarily city officers, while mayors like Ivo Opstelten of the city of Rotterdam played a key role in bringing the requests of the working group to the attention of the EC. This activity lobbying for more influence led to several symbolic and concrete results.…”
Section: Eurocities and The Working Group On Migration And Integrationsupporting
confidence: 60%
“…However, the WGM&I was only formally established as one of the working groups of the Eurocities Forum for Social Affairs in 2005. The official documents of this period (for an extensive analysis, see Gebhardt and Güntner, 2021) reveal the ambition of the WGM&I to have a say in the definition of the ‘European Framework on Integration’ – which was introduced in 2002 in the context of the 1999 Tampere Programme – and to establish direct relations with the European Commission. Regarding the policies of national governments, we recommend […] that in the design of policy concerning immigration and asylum, reception and integration, national governments take into account the most essential element: the impact of policy at the local level … [p. 6].…”
Section: Eurocities and The Working Group On Migration And Integrationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In fact, according to other interviewees (WGM&I_int4 and WGM&I_int5), in spring 2016 the mayor of Amsterdam, together with those of Barcelona, Athens, Ghent, Helsinki, Berlin, Leipzig, Malmö, Paris and Rome, met with Dimitris Avramopoulos, the Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, to denounce the failure of EU refugee redistribution and ask for direct support for cities (see also Gebhardt and Güntner, 2021). At the beginning, the European Commission chaired by Junker was clearly not interested in cities; matters of migration were dealt with national governments only … In the midst of the crisis though, we saw a change of attitude.…”
Section: Eurocities and The Working Group On Migration And Integrationmentioning
City networks (CNs) are often enthusiastically regarded as key actors in processes of Europeanization and multi-level governance (MLG) policy-making in Europe and beyond. However, systematic research on highly contentious issues like migration is still scarce. Building on an understanding of MLG as a specific mode or instance of policy-making, in this article I seek to understand why and how CNs engage in MLG-like policy-making on a typical issue of state sovereignty. I apply the causal process-tracing method to analyse the genesis and policy actions undertaken in the last two decades by two migration CNs in different multi-level political settings: the Eurocities Working Group on Migration and Integration (WGM&I) in the EU and Welcoming America (WA) in the US. The results show that, notwithstanding the differences in the institutional settings, in both contexts instances of MLG policy-making have taken place in the shadow of the will of the national governments, which remain fundamental gate-keepers even in the EU supranational polity, where the European Commission has been particularly active in supporting migration CNs' initiatives.
“…CN leaders are certainly key in this respect. They can play the role of political advocates and exert pressure for the adoption of policies that aim to empower local government institutions, as seems to be suggested by the few existing studies on the city officers leading the Migration and Integration Working Group of the Eurocities network (Flamant, 2017; Gebhardt & Güntner, 2021); or they can act as policy brokers and establish alliances with non‐governmental actors in the attempt to promote cities’ approaches to migration in high‐level policymaking venues. Although the first type of leadership will engage essentially in lobbying, the second seems more likely to spearhead collaborative modes of interaction on both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of migration policymaking.…”
Section: Migration City Network At the Crossroads Of Vertical And Hor...mentioning
Although existing studies have documented the capacity of migration city networks (CNs) to mobilize on the vertical/intergovernmental dimension, there is less evidence of how CNs can contribute to scaling up network governance with societal actors beyond local jurisdictions and favour the emergence of multilevel governance arrangements. In this article, I aim to contribute to deepening our understanding of migration CN horizontal state‐‐society relations by throwing new light on how CN leaders’ agendas affect the policy actions undertaken by two migration CNs in Europe and one in the United States. Evidence shows that migration CNs engage differently with non‐public actors depending on agendas that reflect the aims of their leaders. These agendas can be more or less conducive to scaling up migration network governance. When horizontal/state–society relations are conceived as subordinate to vertical relations, lobbying and political advocacy prevail with little room for the emergence of multilevel governance.
“…Researchers question why ‘the pioneer of the pioneers’ team up in these TCNs. Gebhardt and Guntner (2021) describe TCNs as collective ‘policy entrepreneurs’ that offer new political capacities for the most vibrant cities, such as Barcelona, to act in the governance of migration. Looking also at Barcelona, Agustin (2019) analyses how the initiative of Solidarity Cities in 2016 has been driven by the desire of the Catalan capital to develop new MLG on migration.…”
Section: Unravelling the Driving Forces Behind City Engagement In Fav...mentioning
Drawing on qualitative investigations of three French cities, this this paper contributes to an understanding of the reasons behind the proliferation of activist city networks. Following the literature on the functions of transnational city networks, this article reveals four significant drivers that explain the preference of French cities for national city network ANVITA over international city networks amid a surge of welcoming initiatives. The four drivers offer opportunities to (1) share experience, (2) shame national authorities and propose alternative narratives, (3) limit pressure and opposition from NGOs and activists and (4) lend legitimacy to current policies and attain a label of “welcoming city” for Green and left‐leaning municipal coalitions. Thus, if the practical and symbolic functions are standard with international city networks, the symbolic functions play a significant role; some are explicit (shaming), whereas other are more implicit (relations with NGOs and partisan positioning). This article insists on the need to consider the political dimension of city networking as a significant driver for municipal actors. This political dimension is key to understanding how cities can (or not) be prominent actors in the governance of migration in the years to come.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
