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ABSTRACT
In 2017, a French city devised local policies for immigrants to enter common law as residents. Starting out from the legal status of some of the family members–most often minors who have the right to protection and education–other family members’ rights were gradually to be ‘completed’. Based on case studies of families, we reconstruct the process of ‘completing rights’. By comparing the strategies of the French city concerning immigration policies with grassroots support in a German city, we discuss how immigrants, professionals, volunteers and politicians respond to legal constraints regarding rights of residency and difficult access to housing and work. We thereby aim to contribute to the discussion on the role of cities in current immigration regimes, and to substantiate the discussion by analysing how the biographical experiences and action orientation of the members of immigrant families reflect and contribute to innovative politics on the communal level.
Acknowledgment
We are grateful to our interview partners and our co-researchers at Strasbourg and Frankfurt universities. We would also like to thank the independent peer reviewers for their constructive feedback, as well as the guest editors for their invitation to contribute to this special issue and their helpful advice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 An important recent initiative for German cities is to join the association of ‘secure havens’ against the anti-migration policy of the EU: https://seebruecke.org/sichere-haefen/sichere-haefen/; https://seebruecke.org/en/. The Solidarity Cities initiative provides a platform for migrant-friendly policies in the EU: https://solidaritycities.eu. Following a grass roots petition which gained the support of political parties, the City Council of Zurich voted in November 2020 to develop the project of Züri City Card, designed to provide proof of identity to all city residents, including sans papiers, as well as access to public, health, and cultural services: https://www.zuericitycard.ch/zuri-city-card.
2 The Franco-German database is a qualitative databank that was created in 2015 at Strasbourg University in cooperation with Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. It gathers biographical interviews with immigrants who have arrived in France and Germany from the 1950s up until today as well as semi-structured interviews with professionals, politicians or members of civil society supporting immigrants. Because of the sensitivity of the material and of ethical issues that arise, the databank, of which there are essentially no other examples in France and Germany, is only accessible to a limited group of researchers. The interviews are collected by the participants of a Franco-German network currently comprising about 25 junior and senior researchers as well as Master 1 and Master 2 students. The interviews are conducted using a common interview guideline that focuses on the biographical experiences related to the arrival and integration of immigrants in France and Germany.
3 This interview was conducted by Ariane Izere-Uwayo in 2018 within Le lapin vert, an association created in 2017 to welcome homeless families with children.
4 Between 1998 and 1999, 5.3 million Moroccans lived below the poverty line. A large number of young Moroccans have migrated to Spain. Until 1991 Spain did not require visas for Moroccans. Overcoming the visa constraint afterwards, Moroccans continued to migrate illegally and managed to regularise their administrative situation. Between 1981 and 2002, 144,749 Moroccans were regularised (see Lazaar, Citation2003).
5 115 is the telephone number that homeless people can call to find a place to sleep for one or more nights.
6 Migrant families often have ‘diverse’ and ’incomplete’ rights: children for example have the legal right to protection, whatever their residency situation may be. They have the right to housing and to attend school, even when their parents do not have residency papers or visas. A city official stated during an interview: ‘[On the basis of children’s access to rights] we will, indeed, be able to intervene through child protection services. (…) We will request financial assistance or food aid for the children. (…) We will only seldom be able to have an impact on their procedure for requesting asylum or a residency permit. But the fact that the children have rights will enable us to enlarge the rights of the parents in the field of social protection, such as housing.’ Because a large part of these migrants–may their asylum procedure be successful or not–often remain in the city they have settled in, the city of Strasbourg has made the choice to strive to enlarge their rights as much as possible from the beginning and to consider them as persons who will eventually become fully legal residents.
7 The Département is a territorial subdivision below the Région. Metropolitan France is divided in 97 Départements and 13 ‘régions’.
8 When a child encounters difficulties to express herself or himself the school teacher can send the child to a speech therapist. It is free of charge and it is considered as a tool of education.
9 The CCAS is a municipal institution whose function is to activate social action in the municipality. It develops action such as assistance (whether legal or optional) towards the elderly, or families in difficult situations. It deals with prevention of risks of all kinds and with social development in the municipality, in close collaboration with public and private institutions. It can intervene in the form of refundable or non-refundable services.
10 In a context of increasing demand for asylum protection, particularly in the Bas-Rhin region, the city of Strasbourg has been committed since 2015 to strengthening its common rights mechanisms and developing a proactive policy to meet the basic needs of newly arrived immigrants for independence and inclusion: ‘ … the City carries out specific actions in favour of vulnerable migrant people: - Development of sheltering solutions and reinforcement of accommodation facilities on the territory in conjunction with partners (creation of 100 places in 2018, development of accommodation projects within the framework of temporary urban planning, involvement in the "Housing First" project to encourage those who can access housing to do so and to facilitate the use of emergency and asylum-seeker accommodation facilities); - Construction of specific responses for families with incomplete rights (dedicated resource team within the City's local social action teams, promotion and support for the creation of a place for families to regain strength, etc.); – Impetus for the "hospitable city" approach to understand the needs and implement appropriate solutions with local players (approach benefiting from the resources of the ORIV - Regional Observatory for Integration and the City); – Support for research players in the field of migration and inclusion; – Mobilisation of a post dedicated to the "hospitable city" project within the City's staff to support the commitment of the territory, develop innovative dynamics and seek funding.’ (Extract from the Strasbourg welcoming City Charter, (cit.)).
11 In France, it is required that undocumented people who want to be regularized show payslips.
12 The consequences of the Corona pandemic since March 2020 affected this family similarly as others with few material resources, through job loss and closed schools. The work of the associations has also been impacted, with less donations coming in and support structures breaking away.