Cities and the Contentious Politics of Migration

Cities have emerged as pivotal and indispensable in the larger picture of global migration governance and have gained a high profile in immigration politics, both in practical policy making and in articulating larger moral visions for political community (Penninx et al., 2004; Sassen, 2002; Schiller & Caglar, 2010). Some political and social theorists have argued that in a world of substantial interconnectedness across global and local spheres, national citizenship has become an inadequate mechanism for upholding the rights of immigrants (Benhabib, 2004; Carens, 2013; Soysal, 1994), with effective participatory citizenship at the local community level cast as one means of complementing – and, in some instances, even supplanting – national belonging (Maas, 2013; Schattle, 2012). The idea of the ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre, 1967) has also served as a springboard for new forms of contention in current immigration politics, as communities strive to accommodate competing sets of rights to the city and to clarify whose rights to the city should take priority (Harvey, 2013). Additionally, cities are visible sites of sanctuary, amid considerable debate about the extent local communities appropriately serve a role in taking on more expansive visions than their respective national governments in charting the boundaries of political community. Yet the idea of sanctuary is situated amid shifting politics and vulnerable to increasingly draconian threats, especially amid the resurgence of right-wing populism and the accompanying backlashes against immigration (Murray, 2018; Tirman, 2016; Woods & Arthur, 2017).

Local and transnational social movements play an important role in these debates. Many local political and civic leaders are pushing back against constricted visions of political community amid turbulent political environments – countering and sometimes effectively renegotiating adverse policies put forward by their respective national (and, in some cases, state or provincial) governments – thereby creating more tangible linkages across global and local spheres (de Sousa Santos & Rodríguez-Garavito, 2005; Karapin, 1999; Steil & Vasi, 2014). Furthermore, relationships between ongoing national and global political events carry ever-increasing influence over local community strategies within cities as they adapt, with varying degrees of inclusive and exclusionary policies, to the myriad social and political changes that accompany the arrival of immigrant populations (Walker & Leitner, 2013). Urban political actors across continents are striving to achieve a better balance between humanitarian imperatives and security concerns, and informal local policies and community initiatives are emerging in the absence of meaningful national legislation and policies (Alexander, 2003; Norman, 2019). Lastly, the voices and actions of migrants and refugees themselves are essential in filling such gaps alongside initiatives by political and community elites.

This special issue addresses these multifaceted and multilevel debates, focusing on the role of cities as sites of contentious immigration politics and local community transformations. Connecting global migration politics with city-level perspectives is especially important in light of the current climate of threats to migrants and refugees in North America, Europe and beyond. The collection of articles in this issue critically examines today’s changing, multilayered politics of migration. Using theoretical overviews as well as focused case studies, the articles in this issue pay particular attention to the meaning of sanctuary, immigration federalism, local community strategies aimed at supporting migrants and refugees, the roles of international actors in subnational and urban migration advocacy and protection, and countervailing measures by federal and local authorities to surveil and target migrants in urban spaces. The authors work across several geographic regions – Europe, North America, and the Middle East and North Africa – to offer a series of insights pertinent for scholars of migration, globalization, urbanism, security and development, political sociology, political theory, comparative politics, and international relations.

Our collaboration on this special issue began as a workshop that preceded the International Studies Association (ISA) 2018 Convention in San Francisco, USA. The one-day workshop convened a combination of scholars and activists/practitioners working across a range of approaches and perspectives to studying global migration in the context of local communities. In addition to ten academic participants from universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and South Korea, the workshop included two representatives from civil society organizations based in the Bay Area – the Northern California Rapid Response Network and the Mission Economic Development Agency – as well as a community participant from the ‘Welcome Dayton’ initiative in Ohio and a representative from the San Francisco mayor’s office. Our goal was to begin an in-depth conversation about the role of cities as sites of migration politics, and to bring academics and activist/practitioners together for discussion with the hope of producing engaged and relevant scholarship. Connecting global migration politics with city-level perspectives seemed especially important in light of the increasingly threatening climate for migrants in the United States under the Trump administration. San Francisco's role as a historical and contemporary sanctuary city also offered a unique location and opportunity to explore this theme.

While national policies toward migrants and refugees receive the bulk of academic and political attention, city-level policy responses to immigration can shape integration and exclusion in critical ways. Several contributions to this special issue examine policy-oriented strategies employed by specific local communities in response to ongoing challenges and opportunities presented by immigration, providing a comparative perspective on how cities experience their simultaneous roles as venues of sanctuary and contestation, as well as how city leaders and ethically driven civic activists working with limited resources manage to counter and effectively renegotiate adverse policies put forward by their respective national (and, in some cases, state or provincial) governments. Amentahru Wahlrab and Thomas J. Wahlrab explain in detail how the ‘Welcome Dayton’ initiative, built upon earlier local endeavours in community organizing and mediation, came to serve as a catalyst for a growing movement across the United States seeking to live up to the American self-image as ‘a nation of immigrants’ in the face of an increasingly ominous political terrain during both the Obama and Trump administrations. Their article relates the initiative in Dayton with ongoing scholarly debates on American federalism and the prerogatives of states and localities, while also illustrating how policy activist strategies advance not only social integration but also the social inclusion of migrants, while also revealing the intertwinement of global and local (or ‘glocal’) dynamics.

Continuing with the theme of local community responses to immigrant populations, Miao-ling Hasenkamp investigates the politics of refugee resettlement and integration at state and local levels in Germany following the increase in arrivals in the summer of 2015. Supported by securitization, ethnographic and critical geography approaches, her article detects the changing spaces of the city and presents three accounts centred on the following: unequal burdens and multiple tasks faced by local authorities to address both humanitarian and security concerns; urban community responses and strategies; and the city both as a site of sanctuary and contestation. In arguing for a proper balance between moral urbanism and the logic of control, this article underlines the importance of new self-help strategies and initiatives (e.g. refugees as benefactors, or stifter) introduced by urban communities that have the potential to rewrite the public imaginary of the city while tackling tensions and social conflicts. This is all the more resonant in light of the continuing backdrop of neoliberal globalization that can pose real and immediate challenges to refugees in their daily lives, ranging from securing affordable housing to finding employment opportunities that enable them to live with senses of both freedom and security while establishing entry points toward upward economic and social mobility.

Two contributions to the special issue focus specifically on the concept and reality of sanctuary cities. First, William Arrocha examines their legal and political boundaries and the willingness of state and local jurisdictions to defy federal mandates that have the effect of criminalizing irregular migration in order to implement their own laws and policies that instead promote more compassionate responses to migrants. Arrocha argues that when city ordinances or state legislation such as California’s SB 54, known as the California Values Act, restrict the sharing of data or the use of local and state law enforcement agencies to support federal immigration authorities with the detention and deportation of irregular migrants, it creates new and expanded ‘geographies of sanctuary’ in which deeper trust is built between communities hosting migrants and local authorities. As a result, irregular migrants enjoy more freedoms and guarantees regarding the application of certain fundamental human rights. Despite these positive effects, Arrocha also explores the pressing need for sanctuary cities to build stronger bridges between irregular migrants and their host communities.

Then, drawing on normative political theory, Hans Schattle asks: what are the most important conceptions of ‘sanctuary’, and how do today's sanctuary cities, in practice, interact (or intersect) with such lines of thinking? Schattle examines the moral visions underlying and animating many of today's sanctuary cities in order to illustrate how local communities around the world essentially have adopted a combination of liberal and communitarian perspectives in political theory. By examining public discourse among community leaders and activists in many sanctuary cities in the United States, Schattle shows how the idea of ‘sanctuary’ works across principles of universal rights and equal treatment under the law as emblematic within liberalism and notions of solidarity and the common good, as well as local control and the provision of equal access to public services, that are found in communitarianism. His article then explores how cosmopolitanism in sanctuary cities works across liberal and communitarian thinking through living expressions of the principle of human dignity and equal moral concern for every person living in their local communities.

Finally, Kelsey Norman turns to the Middle East and North Africa to ask how cities develop policies, whether formal or informal, toward migrants and refugees in the face of national inaction on these issues. This question has been explored in the context of North American and European cities, but less so in other migration-receiving regions across the Global South. Her contribution examines recent migration to Cairo, Egypt’s largest urban environment and the semi-permanent home to migrants and refugees from across Africa and the Middle East. Using in-depth fieldwork and interviews with government officials, individual migrants and refugees, and civil society organizations, Norman examines the informal policies toward migrants and refugees that have developed in the absence of national legislation. Her article also assesses the impact these policies have on the capacity of civil society organizations to organize, provide social services, and engage in activism, as well as the ways in which the lives of individual migrants and refugees are impacted as a result. While localized informal policies that develop in the face of national inaction can provide social and economic opportunities and relative anonymity to migrants and refugees, it also places them in a precarious position should the state suddenly consider them a security threat, as occurred during punctuated periods for Palestinian, Syrian, Ethiopian, and Sudanese nationals in Egypt.

The contributions of the practitioners and activists working to combat discrimination, inequality, racism and violations of due process were invaluable to the workshop that led to this special issue of Globalizations. As academics, we were convinced more than ever that the voices of individuals and groups doing work on the ground need to be incorporated all the more often into our discussions, meetings, and publications. Thank you in particular to Norma P. Garcia of the Mission Economic Development Agency, Hamid Yazdan Panah of the Northern California Rapid Response Network, and Julia Sabory of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, for taking the time to share their many insights with us. We also are grateful to the International Ethics and Ethnicity, Migration, and Nationalism Studies sections of the International Studies Association for co-sponsoring the workshop and to the administrative staff at ISA Headquarters for facilitating our meeting spaces. We especially wish to honour the memory of Professor Amy Eckert, who chaired the International Ethics section at the time of our workshop. Professor Eckert brought boundless enthusiasm and generosity to all her endeavours as a scholar, teacher and professional colleague. As someone who would always lend a hand as a panel chair and discussant at professional meetings, Professor Eckert enriched so many conference panels over the years with her insightful and constructive comments that no doubt improved dozens of subsequently published books and articles. She is greatly missed, and we trust her legacy will live on.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kelsey Norman

Kelsey Norman is fellow for the Middle East and director of the Women's Rights, Human Rights & Refugees program at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, USA.

Hans Schattle

Hans Schattle is professor of political science and international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Willem Maas

Willem Maas is professor and Jean Monnet Chair at York University in Toronto, Canada.