Negotiating urban solidarities: multiple agencies and contested meanings in the making of solidarity cities

ABSTRACT

Many cities have adopted welcoming strategies, branding themselves as cities of welcome or of solidarity. Urban scholarship to date has interpreted these efforts either under the rubric of municipal governance reform or urban citizenship, frameworks which both sideline the role of civil society and social movements of refugees. Since these actors play crucial roles in negotiating the terms of solidarity, hospitality and inclusion, this paper brings together research perspectives from urban governance, civil society, and (migrant) mobilization literatures to gain a better understanding of the collaborative/competitive interactions between the key players engaged in this urban policy arena. This discussion reveals that the evolving practices and interrelations of municipalities, civil society actors and social movements of refugees imply opportunities, but also difficulties in building substantively welcoming arrival structures, highlighting the contested meaning of terms such as “solidarity city” in the contemporary constellation.

KEYWORDS:

• Solidarity
• solidarity cities
• forced migration
• urban citizenship
• asylum policy
• civic engagement
• Berlin
• refugees

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the current contribution, we use the term “forced migrant” in the context of the manifold causes and reasons that lead people to migrate (thus, going beyond the legal definition of “refugee”), and as a general notion for people who – as a consequence of economic, environmental, political, social drivers, or of their decision to migrate – end up in asylum procedures. Where we use the term “refugee”, this is less to denote the legal definition of a refugee, but to refer to a political identity and agenda linked to struggles and claims for space and rights.

2. Retrieved from https://www.oldenburg.de/startseite/leben-umwelt/soziales/zuwanderung-und-integration/migration-und-teilhabe/arrival-cities.html, translated by authors.

3. https://seebruecke.org/startseite/sichere-haefen-in-deutschland/kongress-sichere-haefen/

4. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/geordnete-rueckkehr-gesetz-was-steckt-im-migrationspaket-a-1271323.html

5. See, for example, http://freundstattfremd.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Nicht-in-unserem-Namen-Ehrenamtlichen-Streik-11-11-2016.pdf

6. https://aktionbuergerinnenasyl.de

7. https://solidarity-city.eu/de/2017/12/04/faq-haeufige-fragen-zur-initiative-buergerasyl/

8. https://solidarity-city.eu/en/about/

9. See the Decision of the Social Court of 28 August 2014: http://www.fluechtlingsinfo-berlin.de/fr/pdf/SG_Berlin_AsylbLG_gekuerzt_und_Nachweis_Unterkunft_Oplatz_Lampedusa.pdf

10. http://berlin-hilft.com/2016/08/gerhart-hauptmann-schule-wird-nun-doch-fluechtlingsunterkunft/

11. http://wer.oplatz.net/news-from-ohlauer-school-wer-13/

12. See https://solidaritycities.eu/

13. See www.coe.int/en/web/interculturalcities