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38
FMR 63
Cities and towns
February 2020www.fmreview.org/cities
The path of least resistance? EU cities and locally
organised resettlement
Tihomir Sabchev and Moritz Baumgärtel
The scaling up of locally organised, city-led routes to resettlement could form part of a larger
solution to Europe’s current political crisis and deadlock around migration.
Over recent years, local governments have
gradually earned a prominent place in
Europe’s system of migration governance.
This increased inuence can be aributed to
decades-long processes of decentralisation
and the devolution of competencies across
European countries.1 From providing
housing to ensuring access to education and
labour market integration, many aspects of
migrants’ everyday lives are today directly
dependent on the capacity of municipal
authorities and their public and private sector
partners to eectively full these tasks.
Particularly since the summer of 2015,
when local governments had to ll many gaps
in the national provision of refugee reception
services, there have been clear aempts on
the part of local government to inuence
migration policy making beyond their local
mandate. For this purpose, local governments
are increasingly teaming up with like-minded
partners in transnational partnerships, the
most prominent examples being transnational
city networks such as Eurocities and
Solidarity Cities. These provide not only new
opportunities for policy exchange but also for
the political promotion of local government
objectives, which are sometimes diametrically
opposed to the priorities of their respective
central governments. Barcelona and Athens,
for instance, proposed a direct relocation of
refugees between the two cities in March
2016, a plan that was vetoed by the Spanish
government.2 In Germany, the Seebrücke
movement comprises more than 100 cities and
towns and has been pressuring the federal
government to allow local authorities to take
in refugees directly from the Italian ports.
Locally organised reselement
Small-scale reselement schemes based on
Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees
Program have been part of the international
migration governance system for some
time now. While many EU countries have
pursued ever more restrictive approaches
with respect to international protection,
others (most notably Ireland, the UK and
Germany) have demonstrated an unusual
anity towards this kind of boom-up
reselement. The most prominent example,
however, can be found in Italy, where for four
years a project led by the church organisation
Community of Sant’Egidio has been oering
safe passage for displaced people from
camps in the Middle East and Africa through
its Humanitarian Corridors initiative. The
project ocially started at the end of 2015
with the signing of a Memorandum of
Understanding between Sant’Egidio and a
number of other faith-based organisations
and Italy’s Interior, Foreign Aairs and
International Cooperation ministries.
With the support of the UN Refugee
Agency (UNHCR), Sant’Egidio and its
partners identify potential candidates for
Planners can work alongside NGOs and
communities to prioritise the development
of green public spaces which allow for
wider community interaction. Spaces
can be conceptualised and developed in
partnership with various stakeholders,
including host communities and refugees,
to enhance a sense of shared ownership
and responsibility to ensure the upkeep
of spaces despite limited resources.
Sarah Linn slinn1@shefeld.ac.uk
ESRC-funded PhD candidate, Department of
Urban Studies and Planning, University of
Shefeld www.shefeld.ac.uk/usp
1. This eldwork was supported in part by the White Rose
Doctoral Training Centre (WRDTC).
39
FMR 63
Cities and towns
February 2020 www.fmreview.org/cities
reselement from refugee camps mainly
in Lebanon, Jordan and Ethiopia. Aer the
Ministry of Interior screens and approves
the list of candidates, the Italian consulate
in each location issues each person with
a humanitarian visa. The refugees are
then own to Italy where they lodge their
application for international protection.
Once there, they are dispersed across
cities (currently more than 90 cities in
18 dierent regions) where they receive
reception and integration assistance
from a large network of local church
associations, civil society, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and families. The
services oered include accommodation,
language classes, job orientation, cultural
mediation and legal assistance.
The host organisations are responsible
for the refugees’ integration for at least
a year, although in many cases they
continue providing partial support (mainly
accommodation) for a longer period,
oen until people become self-sucient.
All the costs associated with the project
are covered by Sant’Egidio and the other
host organisations.3 The project currently
reseles about 750 refugees per year
which, although a modest number, is still
more than the number accepted by most
individual Member States.4 In recognition
of its contribution to protecting refugees
the project was selected as regional winner
for Europe in UNHCR’s prestigious Nansen
Award for Refugees in September 2019.5
Smaller but similar initiatives have
recently been established in Belgium and
France and – in addition to those boom-up
initiatives that already exist – progressive
and resourceful cities like Barcelona, Vienna
and Hamburg have openly and repeatedly
declared their willingness to host and
support refugees. In our view, the expansion
of these initiatives by local governments
could represent the path of least resistance
to more far-reaching reforms of the EU
migration governance system. Even though
previous aempts for establishing city-to-
city refugee relocation mechanisms have
been met with resistance by EU Member
States, the locally organised reselement
initiatives and other community-based
sponsorship projects have so far not
been challenged politically or legally.
Two aspects of locally organised
reselement seem to contribute decisively
to lessening the resistance of States. First,
the project design satises the security
concerns of central governments, as
national authorities can screen individuals
before authorising their reselement.
Second, central governments do not cover
the costs of the initial reception and the
short- to medium-term integration into
local communities. While they still need to
provide access to national social security
and health-care systems, they receive all the
long-term benets that derive from refugees’
permanent selement and their integration
in demographically ageing countries.
Cities and the future of refugee
reselement
There are other reasons to believe that cities
are the logical sites for the development of
sustainable refugee reselement schemes.
Firstly, local authorities are in a position to
assess, easily and accurately, local capacity
to host and integrate refugees. They have up-
to-date knowledge on housing availability,
health-care services and school places,
ethnic and religious communities, and
local labour market conditions. Secondly,
many local authorities have gained
signicant experience in managing refugee
reception and integration and are willing
to continue investing in this eld. For
instance, many municipalities in Germany
and the Netherlands now have local oces
that work exclusively on immigration and
integration governance issues. The knowledge
accumulated by these oces and the links
they have established with NGOs and
private actors can be mobilised for the locally
organised reselement initiatives. Thirdly,
local governments have begun to collaborate
directly with international organisations like
UNHCR, the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) and UNICEF. In Greece,
for example, these organisations have been
assigning members of their sta to work
within certain municipalities, which has
40
FMR 63
Cities and towns
February 2020www.fmreview.org/cities
contributed enormously to the development
of local migration governance capacity.
Local governments can capitalise on these
transnational partnerships to give substance
to the recent calls for a wider collaboration
in the eld of refugee reselement.6
From the perspective of local
governments, there are also good reasons
to promote localised refugee reselement
initiatives. European cities have demonstrated
their ambition to enhance their role in
migration governance. They experience
directly the consequences of immigration
and the related policy challenges but are
not given a seat at the table when important
decisions are being taken. In addition,
many local governments openly oppose
the deterrence-based approaches promoted
by the EU and its Member States. Locally
managed routes to reselement could place
cities at the centre of migration governance,
at least from an organisational point of
view, thus avoiding locally problematic
outcomes while at the same time oering
beer protection to displaced people.
In practical terms, we suggest a two-step
approach to expanding locally organised
reselement. Initially, self-nanced
small-scale reselement projects led by
local authorities could be implemented
simultaneously in several countries with
the authorisation of the respective national
governments. The process could be facilitated
by existing transnational migration city
networks. While one can be sceptical about
the potential of local governments to nance
such initiatives, one should remember that
– in the absence of nancial support from
central governments – many municipalities
have invested signicantly in the reception
and integration of refugees over recent
years. Moreover, local governments that
have openly expressed their willingness
to accept more refugees should be able
to justify modest additional spending on
reselement projects; the cost of the UK
community sponsorship scheme, for instance,
is estimated at £9,000 per reseled family.7
At the same time, municipalities should call
for additional EU funding to support their
initiatives. Given that a signicant amount of
EU funds for the reselement and relocation
of displaced people have over the years been
allocated to EU governments which have
then failed to meet their commitments, it is
not dicult to see the merit of channelling
some of the funds directly to cities.
Ultimately, city-led reselement projects
could gradually be expanded both within
and across countries, while processes
can be improved over time in line with
accumulated evidence and experience.
Enlarging the scope, size and quality
of reselement programmes is one of
the key objectives of the Global Compact
on Refugees. At the same time, the gap
between reselement needs and the places
made available by States is widening. We
believe that local governments could be
the driving force behind addressing this
mismatch. Given the rapid urbanisation and
the expected increase in climate change-
related displacement, it seems wise to
invest in the development of these sorts of
sustainable solutions to migration-related
challenges. If successful, the gradual
expansion of city-led reselement practices
could turn into a type of ‘controlled’
policy reform that, without reinforcing
political divides, could bring about a
paradigm shi in migration governance.
Tihomir Sabchev t.y.sabchev@uu.nl
PhD Researcher
Moritz Baumgärtel m.g.n.baumgartel@uu.nl
Senior Researcher
Cities of Refuge NWO VICI research project,
Utrecht University/University College Roosevelt
www.citiesofrefuge.eu
1. Lacroix T and Desille A (Eds) (2017) International Migrations and
Local Governance: A Global Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
2. bit.ly/Barcelona-Athens-refugees
3. Humanitarian Corridors (2019) Humanitarian Corridors:
implementation procedures for their extension on a European scale
bit.ly/HumanitarianCorridors-2019
4. See p5 bit.ly/Eurostat-EU-asylum-decisions-Apr19
5. bit.ly/Nansen-HumCorridors-2019
6. Swing L (2017) ‘Practical considerations for eective
reselement’, Forced Migration Review issue 54
www.fmreview.org/reselement/swing
7. HM Government (2016) Community Sponsorship: Guidance for
prospective sponsors bit.ly/UKGov-Prospective-Sponsors-2016 p11
