Friends, foes or both? Civil society actors and city governments in the battleground of EU migration policy

Abstract

Over the last few years, the role played by civil society actors and city governments in EU migration governance has been increasingly discussed, in both academic research and policy fora. At the theoretical level, Bauder (2021) investigated the concept of urban solidarity, disclosing its complexity and contradictory meaning, which encompass top-down policies and bottom-up practices. Oomen et al. (2021) theorised the different strategies adopted by cities to defy national and supranational migration policies. Other scholars bridged different perspectives by analysing the overall role that civil society and city governments can play together in EU migration governance from a multi-scale perspective (Caponio 2022; Lacroix & Spencer 2022) At the empirical level, scholarship explored the local scale of migration governance to disclose that the city represented the place for building transversal solidarity struggles by migrants and citizens in numerous European municipalities (Ataç et al. 2023). Other scholars called attention on the political positioning of city governments, contending that left-leaning governments at the city-level are more likely to ally with pro-migrant social movements to implement welcoming policies towards migrants in otherwise hostile contexts (Bazurli 2019). In exploring inclusive policies and practices towards migrants developed at the city level, Özdemir (2022) argued that local responses vary depending on the different dynamics emerged between city governments and local civil society organisations. Building upon such flourishing literature, this panel aims to explore in greater depth the relationship between civil society and cities in the field of migration governance. In particular, acknowledging that their interaction can range from full cooperation to overt antagonism, we intend to cast light on the factors that explain the different types of relationship between civil society actors and city governments, and to explore the impact that the interplay between the two has in the field of migration governance. Presentations and discussion will therefore address questions such as: ▪️ Which exogenous and/or endogenous conditions create favourable opportunities for cooperation between civil society actors and cities? ▪️ Which conditions are more conducive to contentious and confrontational interaction? ▪️ Which factors contribute to generating an impact of said actors on migration governance? This panel lies at the intersection of migration, social movement and urban studies. Hence, it comprises theoretical and empirical contributions from the wide spectrum of the social and political sciences, and which adopt diverse methodological approaches. By looking at the relationship between civil society actors and city governments from different analytical and methodological angles, we aim to disentangle the complex role that these two actors play in the battleground of EU migration policy.

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