THOMAS JEZEQUEL

 

Asylum policy is a responsibility of national governments. According to the EUROCITIES report ‘Refugee reception and integration in cities’, many cities have taken over from national authorities to set up reception measures for refugees. Can you put an example of how  this can be conceived?

 

Cities most of the time do not have a formal legal role in receiving asylum seekers, but they had to act because nobody else did. There are countless examples of this. It is fair to say that national governments did not plan for the massive wave of arrivals which took place in 2015, and that no or very little measures were in place. But at city level, the belief that the refugee crisis would have a strong urban dimension was already there in 2014: cities like Milan or Athens were already telling us that they had to play a role normally devoted to national governments. This lead to the release of our “Statement on Asylum in cities” in spring 2015, a few months before the “Balkan Road” crisis saw the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, or Malmö…  These cities had to act quickly and beyond their mandate to avoid a humanitarian crisis. This response was made possible because Mayors showed leadership and empowered their administrations to act, also often playing a coordinating role of all actions at local level: the response of NGOs, public agencies, Civil Society Organisations and volunteers helped a great deal.

While one of the recommendations of this same EUROCITIES report is to housing refugees in socially mixed communities, the idea of ‘integration through segregation’ argues that migrants find it easier to settle if they share space with people from their same community of origin. What is your opinion about this?

 

The trend at city level seems to be, and for quite a number of years, firmly against the idea that segregation can have a positive effect.

 

Much is done at city level to promote social mix, to deliver affordable housing in a time of austerity, budget cuts and adverse EU state aid rules. The refugee crisis makes this issue even more acute: the point of view that newcomers should be “dispersed” across neighbourhoods and communities at city level seems very mainstream to me, in cities receiving a few hundreds of refugees and cities receiving tens of thousands. This is not only a question of integration but also a question of social cohesion as a whole: as a decision maker and an elected politician it is much easier to defend desegregated housing, small shelters and individual apartments than massive refugee reception centres. It means that pressure on public services is balanced across the city and not concentrated on what particular neighbourhood.

 

According to the Integrating Cities Charter last report, some city policies are moving away from immigrant-specific services toward service provision for all residents, irrespective of their language, nationality and country of birth. If we consider that the process of integration should be bidirectional, what role do you think refugees and migrants should play in this regard?

 

 

There is always a trend going towards a “mainstreaming” approach, seeing social inclusion as the key and integration as outdated, but it is often counterbalanced by cities that move back to a more targeted approach. Nevertheless, the idea that all city services should have an integration dimension in mind is embedded into the Integrating Cities Charter: it is not up to a single integration department at city level to make integration work. Its task is to play a coordinating role and to make all services (Labour Market Inclusion, Housing, Culture, Education, etc) work together with the same objective and under the same principles. This is the so called “integrated approach”, and a great added value at a local level.

 

The refugee crisis has an accelerating effect, and many cities are updating their integration plan to make it relevant to the new situation. “Integration from day one” is the new motto in many cities, meaning that city services do not wait for newcomers to receive a refugee status to start integration. This is about empowerment and maximising the chance of a quick and smooth integration into society.

 

What we’ve witnessed also in this new situation is that many asylum seekers and refugees are keen to self-organise into associations, collectives, interacting with civil society organisations and volunteers in host cities. City authorities often have a key role in “picking up” these initiatives, providing them with support, funding, or even making them part of the city administration, to ensure they can be made more sustainable and have a greater effect.

 

While engaging public perception on migration and diversity and providing language courses are essential for cities to work towards refugee and migrants’ integration, how could urban planning contribute to this aim?

 

 

Again this is about the way we live in cities that are increasingly diverse. This is a question of social cohesion, and of a city’s role to promote social mix and avoid segregation. This is not only linked to the refugee crisis, but a more global question of demographic change and growing cities. Housing is one of the main challenges for major cities today, and the provision of affordable housing for all is very high on the agenda.

 

For many cities, the refugee crisis has put even more pressure on the availability of housing stock. This trend is likely to continue, as most recognised refugees will settle in cities.

The construction of new social housing for vulnerable groups such as refugees is not hindered by state aid rules. Nevertheless, an approach that focuses only on providing affordable housing for refugees and not to other vulnerable groups could lead to social conflicts and tensions. Giving newcomers access to housing in cities while lower middle class populations struggle to find decent and affordable housing and are unable to access social housing will lead to resentment.

 

Furthermore, focusing on the delivery of social housing to refugees alone will cause segregation and risks creating ghettos. This will be detrimental to the social integration of refugees. Using public funds on housing for refugees while neglecting other parts of society is not a viable solution. A more flexible policy of providing affordable housing for all would enable cities and housing providers to play a crucial role in mixing newcomers with the local population.

 

In a context of budget cuts and recruitment freezing in cities, is there a potential growing space for the private sector to invest in social housing and urban planning in view of integrating refugees and migrants?

 

More generally there is a growing space for non-public actors to play a role in the integration of newcomers. By this I also mean volunteers, civil society organisations, philanthropies, and of course the private sector. This is not a challenge that cities can face alone, and while we advocate for better multi-level governance (effective collaboration between cities, regions, nations and the EU) and direct funding for cities for integration matters, we are very conscious that public administrations will not deliver unless they work closely with other stakeholders at local level. This is not limited to social housing, where investment is in any case limited by EU State Aid rules as it must focus solely on so-called “vulnerable groups”. Private sector involvement is obviously needed to strengthen the link between education and labour market inclusion, to improve vocational training programs, Cities have a key role to play in promote inclusive labour market at local level, as they can coordinate the efforts of all stakeholders.

 

One of the problems of the refugee and migrant crisis is the lack of support in certain countries. What can be done to encourage the support of hosting communities to host migrants and refugees from a city perspective?

 

Few topics illustrate as much as the refugee crisis how much cities and national governments diverge than when it comes to how they communicate about it. Over the last few years, many national politicians in the EU deliberately trumped up fears, resentment and rejection. Their narrative has been about border control and protection, terrorism and radicalization, protecting the homogeneity and “values” of the society, while pretending to do this to prevent the rise of even more populist parties.

This is of course problematic, but very often we see that major cities talk and act very differently from their national governments. There is no comparison between migration policies at local level in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and the national discourse in the UK. Cities like Gdansk and Poznan in Poland, Brno in the Czech Republic, both in a very hostile political context, are working intensely on integration and diversity and want to be open to the world. In cities where such leadership is demonstrated, and I mean political leadership and commitment by all levels of the administration, I firmly believe that perceptions can change and hosting communities can feel empowered to demonstrate support to migrants and refugees. The anti-refugee, anti-migrant, anti-diversity discourse is far from being mainstream in large cities in Europe, this is quite the opposite.

The recent open letter from European mayors members of EUROCITIES to EU leaders on World Refugee Day 2016 made it clear:

 

“There is too much talk of quotas, numbers and borders, and not enough of people. These are people who are fleeing war, persecution and destitution. How we treat them when they arrive in our local communities will determine the success of long term integration and social cohesion in Europe as whole”

 

In each city, there are citizens acquired to the “cause” of refugees, whose response to the first mass arrivals was often overwhelming. For some of them, most of the time, the city does not do enough, and they keep their city council accountable. Some cities, in countries which did not receive as many refugees, reported that they were under pressure from citizens to act and prepare themselves to welcome more, for example in Barcelona or Madrid. There are obviously in some cities groups which are unequivocally hostile to refugees, migrants and diversity, and which will not be convinced otherwise. Cities still have to try to engage with these groups, at least to counter their rhetoric.  But cities also and mainly have to communicate towards what has been defined as the “anxious middle”. These are citizens whose concerns about newcomers must be heard and addressed in an open and transparent manner. Dismissing them and shutting them down will only feed rumours, resentment and fears, especially in a context where topics like terrorism and radicalisation are high on the political and media agenda. The objective are to build trust in the way authorities are dealing with the situation, and acceptance at city level in order to foster social cohesion and improve chances of integration for newcomers.

Integration policies in general and in particular all the work on public commitment to an inclusive and diverse society, awareness raising, challenging prejudices, defusing tensions, are nothing new for many European Cities. This is why they are the best placed to make integration happen and to promote a different narrative about welcoming migrants and refugees in our societies.