Final Report Summary - LOCAL TURN (A local turn in migrant integration policies? Local citizenship and integration policy appraches in the context of multi-level governance in Europe) The aim of this project was to investigate the role of cities in designing immigrant integration policies in Europe. This role has received growing attention in recent years. Political discourse at EU and national level has stressed the need to address immigrant integration in a bottom-up manner, whereby cities take on a central role and the idea that “integration happens primarily at local level” has gradually become recognised. Researchers, observing a “local turn” in immigrant integration, have attempted to gauge the scope cities have in designing relevant policies, and how these policies might differ in orientation from their national counterparts. So far, however, the results have been inconclusive.Against this backdrop the project aimed to contribute to a better understanding of the role of cities. It did so in two ways: firstly by mapping developments in the governance relations between the different levels of government concerned with immigration; secondly by conducting in-depth analyses of- and comparisons between- local integration policies in two pairs of cities in Spain and Germany (Barcelona and Madrid; Frankfurt and Munich), in order to understand the extent to which their similarities and differences could be understood within their local or national context.As to the first part of the project, an article on multi-level coordination in immigrant integration policies (Gebhardt 2014) showed how cities and states often have very different perspectives on immigration: generally speaking, while cities might have a more ‘realistic' perspective, states tend to be more legalistic. The article also found that few coordination mechanism exist to align these perspectives; that policies are often changed unilaterally by states; and that it is difficult for cities to gain support from above when new migratory trends occur. Going into further detail, a second article (Gebhardt 2015a forthcoming) focused on civic integration programmes for immigrants. Such programmes have been designed in many EU member states over the last 15 years and have become the main policy tool in immigrant integration, in terms of the economic resources they consume. Looking at the examples of the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden drawing on interviews with local policy makers in two cities in each country, the article found that these programmes have led to a centralisation of integration and have diminished the role of cities in immigrant integration. They are part of a wider formalization of immigrant integration that is more focused on regulating legal status and less with addressing the practicalities of the everyday life of immigrants. Against this backdrop, calling for a more bottom-up approach to policy design and proclaiming a “local turn” in the politically contested field of immigrant integration would seem to be more about good-governance rhetoric than a reflection of a real policy change. The in-depth analysis of immigrant integration policies in four cities, conducted in the second part of the project, was based on fieldwork and interviews with representatives from local administration and immigrant organisations. It took, as its starting point, the observation that most of the bigger and highly diverse European cities today draw heavily on policy frameworks such as interculturalism, diversity, participation, cohesion, non-discrimination that conceive immigrant incorporation beyond targeted policies, and correspond in their scope, depth and universal outlook to the concept of citizenship. A further article (Gebhardt 2015b, forthcoming) sketched the concept of urban citizenship policies and applied it to the city of Barcelona. It argued that cities regulate citizenship (and its interrelated dimensions of membership, rights and identity) from a particular position: a point of tension where the normative perspective on immigration and the reality of the phenomenon meet. The normative perspective on immigration consists of the state’s formal regulation of citizenship, which defines the broad lines for the inclusion and exclusion of immigrants through policies for admission, access to nationality etc. but gives cities some scope to modify this framework. The reality of immigration consists of the exclusion of immigrants that results from the normative regulation, which is omnipresent in cities and exerts pressure on city governments to find remedies –often mediated through civil society. This sandwich position between the formal regulation of citizenship and the claims for inclusion creates tension but is also a source of creativity for local policies. Drawing on the case of Barcelona to explore this concept empirically, the article found that the city’s policies are explicit about Barcelona’s role as a source of membership, rights and identity. This is expressed in the relatively ambitious, coherent, and deep regulation of citizenship, and has a real impact on the lives of its immigrant residents.Widening the scope of analysis to all four city cases, some first findings (which will be first published in a GRITIM-UPF working paper in late 2015) are that while all four cities enjoy considerable scope to change the reality of citizenship for immigrants, this regulation is not complete and fully coherent, and each city has gaps of varying size, and puts an emphasis on different areas of intervention. With few exceptions, adapting the key mainstream services (housing, education, employment) to the specific needs of immigrants is the main challenge for all four cities. The reasons for this are the complexity of (multi-level) governance of these services; mainstream not sharing the priority of (immigrant) inclusion; and a lacking commitment or capacity –beyond immigration— to work towards social inclusion: urban citizenship for immigrants finds its limits in an unjust city model. The comparison also shows that while cities may draw on similar concepts (such as convivencia intercultural in Barcelona and Madrid), they might interpret their role in fostering immigrant inclusion very differently (namely in a much less ambitious, deep and coherent manner in the case of Madrid). This calls for prudence in analyzing local policies mainly through policy discourses and policy frames, as most of the research on local integration policies does. dirk_gebhardt@gmx.de; dirk.gebhardt@upf.edu
