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Abstract
This article proposes that the role of cities in immigrant integration be reconsidered through the prism of urban citizenship, looking at how local policies co-regulate immigrants’ status, rights and identity. It argues that urban citizenship connects two dominant understandings of citizenship, as city governments are under pressure to reconcile the normative perspective of formal membership of the state with the claims for rights expressed by excluded parts of the urban citizenry. A case study of an inclusive way of regulating citizenship in Barcelona illustrates how a citizenship perspective can cast light on the specific ways in which cities regulate immigrant citizenship in interaction with higher levels of government, and highlights some of the levers cities possess to modify the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion of immigrants locally.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas and two anonymous referees for their comments. He is grateful for the opportunity to present earlier versions of this paper in the workshops on multi-level governance of immigration and integration policies at the Politicologenetmaal Maastricht, 2014; on Comparing regional and local integration policies at the IMISCOE conference in Madrid, 2014; on migrants and cities at the EUI’s 9th Max Weber Fellows June Conference in Florence, 2015 and at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
Funding
This work was supported by the European Union through a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship [grant number PIEF-GA-2012–330057].
Notes
1. This is mirrored in strategies such as ‘Encouraging diversity and strengthening cohesion’, Berlin (2007), ‘Engage in the city’, Copenhagen (2011), the ‘Intercultural integration strategy’ of Munich (2008), the ‘Equality, integration, citizenship’ policy of Nantes (2010) but also in many Dutch, Swedish and British cities relying on mainstreaming non-discrimination and diversity policies. See Gebhardt (Citation2014).
2. It is interesting to compare the shares of immigrants and their descendants in cities and states, for example, non-nationals in Belgium, represent 33% of the population in Brussels but just 11% of the national population; foreign-born residents represent 30% in Malmo compared to 15% in Sweden and 34% in London compared to 12% in the United Kingdom; 38% of Munich’s population have a migration background compared to 20% in Germany.
3. A potential fourth dimension of citizenship is participation, which is essential for the practice perspective of citizenship. While cities are confronted by claims for participation, their policies for participation are notoriously insufficient in relation to such claims (Rodatz Citation2014). For the sake of clarity, it seems more appropriate to consider participation as a factor influencing urban citizenship policies in all of its dimensions instead of treating it as a separate dimension.
4. In May 2015, the citizens’ platform Barcelona en Comú won the local elections with the promise to increase citizen participation. The change of government has also affected policies for immigrants, when the new city council labelled Barcelona as city of refuge, and increased the budget for newcomer reception policies accordingly. These changes remain outside the period that is covered by this article though.
5. Barcelona is active in several European initiatives on immigrant integration, for example, Eurocities’ ‘integrating cities’ initiative and the Council of Europe’s ‘intercultural cities’ network.
6. The separatist left-wing party Esquerra Republicana participated as minor partner in left-wing coalition governments from 2003 to 2011 and the centre-right newly separatist party Convergència i Unió was governing party from 2011 to 2015.
7. The latest policy plan on immigration 2012–2015 and the 2010 intercultural plan were approved in the city parliament through a wide consensus of political parties going beyond those in government. In 2012, when the city government changed for the first time since the transition to democracy from the left to the centre-right, the re-orientation of policies towards immigrants was not radical but rather nuanced (Interview expert Barcelona; Interview policy-maker Barcelona 1).
8. According to data received from the Catalan DG for Immigration.
9. Ajuntament de Barcelona, press release, Xavier Trias: ‘La cooperativa de recollida de residus vol ajudar a la inserció social i laboral de les persones que es dediquen a aquesta activitat’. 24 July 2014.
10. ‘Una cooperativa para recoger chatarra.’ El País, 29 June 2015.
11. El Diario, 08 July 2014, ‘L'ombra dels desallotjaments plana sobre els assentaments de Barcelona un any després’; Press release of the Federation of neighbourhood associations of Barcelona FAVB ‘A un any del desallotjament del darrer gran assentament del Poblenou’, 29 July 2014.
13. According to data from 2015 (Ajuntament de Barcelona Citation2015), some 20,000 voters with foreign nationalities are on the electoral register. The actually eligible population who could take part can be estimated to be at least 60,000. This is based on 94,000 registered persons in the population register in 2014 that have nationalities enjoying the right to vote in Spanish local elections, of which minors and people with an insufficient length of residency need to be subtracted.
15. One of the rare examples of policies in Barcelona which narrowed down diversity with illiberal means was the ban on burkhas in public buildings in 2010. This ban, which was justified on grounds of public safety by the then socialist mayor, and included other headgears, had little practical relevance due to the almost total absence of burkha wearers in the city. It formed part of a wider wave of similar bans in many Catalan cities and towns in a phase of pre-electoral competition, and hints to the primary goal of this measure to leave a symbolic mark about the limits of diversity.