Local politics of (dis)integration. Comparing challenges, policies and practices in relation to post-2014 immigrants’ access to housing and employment in medium and small sized towns across the EU.

Based on preliminary findings from the ongoing “Whole-COMM” project (H2020), this paper aims to better understand some of the concrete challenges and opportunities that the arrival and settlement of post-2014 migrants pose for small and medium sized towns across the EU. It draws on semi-structured interviews with public, private, and civil society actors, which were conducted between September 2021 and February 2022 in a total of 40 municipalities across seven EU-Member states. Our analysis primarily focusses on migrants’ access to adequate housing and employment in these localities, as two key resources in relation to both fundamental rights protection and “sustainable integration”. The findings indicate that access depends not only on structural conditions (e.g., supply and demand in local labour and housing markets) but is being mediated by a diverse range of local actors with different interests, resources, and power positions. Integration and social cohesion do not necessarily represent the only/overall rationale guiding their various efforts, and the interplay between them can also lead to exclusion and inequality. This interplay and the resulting measures can thus be analysed in terms of what Collyer, Hinger and Schweitzer (2020) call the ‘politics of (dis)integration’. Looking at how the same types of actors (try to) foster but sometimes also hinder post-2014 migrants´ access to adequate housing and employment in different local and national contexts, will help us to better understand these local politics of (dis)integration from a comparative perspective.